How compression affects the use of message queues

Abstract: Message queues are data structures that can be distributed over a network to send messages between different end points. These message queues are used for example in micro service based architectures for communication. Some message queues sends one message at a time and some queues batch messages together and sends them in a chunk. This study focused on batch file based message queues and how compression affects latency and throughput versus no compression. The use of the right compression method is vital for reducing network traffic, CPU and memory usage. This study performed tests where data of different sizes were sent from a producer to the queue and then consumed by a consumer. These three components were placed on a locked local machine. Tests were done with different number of messages sent and different sizes of each message. The data that were sent was a map of the Faroe Islands represented as a XML file to create fair compression ratios. The study concluded that at no point had no compression lower latency or higher throughput compared to a tested compression method.