Amazon SQS vs Confluent: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) and Confluent. Both Amazon SQS and Confluent are messaging systems that provide reliable communication between distributed components in modern software architectures. However, there are distinct differences that set them apart. Let's delve into these differences below.

1. Focus: Amazon SQS primarily focuses on providing a fully managed message queuing service, while Confluent is a streaming platform built around Apache Kafka. While SQS focuses on message queuing and delivery, Confluent provides a broader set of capabilities for building real-time streaming applications.

2. Data Model: In Amazon SQS, messages are stored as discrete entities and the system guarantees at-least-once delivery. On the other hand, Confluent uses Kafka, a distributed streaming platform, where messages are stored in distributed commit logs called topics. Kafka provides strong durability guarantees as it persists messages to disk, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance.

3. Scalability: Amazon SQS is fully managed and can automatically scale to handle large amounts of message traffic. It allows you to create an unlimited number of queues and supports a high number of concurrent readers and writers. Confluent also offers scalability, but it requires manual configuration and tuning of Kafka brokers, topics, and partitions to achieve desired throughput and latency.

4. Latency: While Amazon SQS guarantees high message durability, it may introduce some additional latency due to its fully managed nature. In contrast, Confluent Kafka offers exceptionally low end-to-end latency, often in the millisecond range, making it well-suited for real-time event streaming and high-throughput environments.

5. Ecosystem: Amazon SQS is tightly integrated with other AWS services, making it easy to build serverless architectures and leverage other AWS capabilities like AWS Lambda for message processing. Confluent, being built around Kafka, benefits from a rich ecosystem that includes connectors, stream processing frameworks like Apache Flink and Apache Samza, and various tooling for data integration, monitoring, and management.

6. Community and Support: Being a key offering of Amazon Web Services, Amazon SQS has a large user community and benefits from the support and documentation provided by AWS. Confluent also has a growing community around Apache Kafka, with extensive documentation, online resources, and a vibrant ecosystem that actively contributes to its development and maintenance.

In summary, the key differences between Amazon SQS and Confluent lie in their focus, data model, scalability, latency, ecosystem, and community and support. While Amazon SQS is a managed message queuing service, Confluent is a broader streaming platform built around Kafka, offering high scalability, low latency, and a rich ecosystem for real-time event streaming applications.