How can I explain the concept of SQS visibility timeout to one of my colleagues?

 In the context of AWS, the SQS visibility timeout is the duration during which a message is invisible to the other customers after being retrieved by one customer. Here is the explanation given below:-

“When a particular customer retrieves a particular message from an SQS queue, the message becomes temporarily invisible to the other consumers for a particular species duration known as the visibility timeout.”

Factors to consider:-

Message processing time

You should set the visibility timeout longer than the expected time it takes for a consumer so that they can process a message. This would ensure that the message should remain invisible until the processing is complete.

Retry mechanism

If your system is using a retry mechanism for the failed message then try to consider the time that it takes for the process of retrying to occur. You should set the visibility timeout according to prevent premature message re-processing.

Consumer concurrency

If the message consumers process the message concurrently, then you should ensure that the visibility timeout allows enough time for one customer to process the message before it becomes visible to the others.

Queue throughout

You can consider the overall throughout of your SQS queue. A longer visibility timeout is necessary for high throughout queues for the purpose of handling the processing delays.

Here is an example given below of how you can set the visibility timeout when sending a message to an SQS queue by using the AWS SDK for the Java programming language:-

Import com.amazonaws.services.sqs.AmazonSQS;

Import com.amazonaws.services.sqs.AmazonSQSClientBuilder;

Import com.amazonaws.services.sqs.model.SendMessageRequest;

Public class SQSSendMessage {

    Public static void main(String[] args) {

        String queueUrl = “your_queue_url”;

        String messageBody = “Hello, SQS!”;

        Int visibilityTimeoutSeconds = 60; // Set the visibility timeout in seconds

        AmazonSQS sqsClient = AmazonSQSClientBuilder.defaultClient();

        SendMessageRequest sendMessageRequest = new SendMessageRequest()

                .withQueueUrl(queueUrl)

                .withMessageBody(messageBody)

                .withVisibilityTimeout(visibilityTimeoutSeconds);

        sqsClient.sendMessage(sendMessageRequest);

        System.out.println(“Message sent to SQS queue with visibility timeout.”);

    }

}