[rabbitmq-discuss] to ack or not to ack? that is the question...

Thu Apr 15 21:07:01 BST 2010

:)

I've noticed I'm a little schizophrenic when it comes to ACKing messages. I'm wondering how others handle whether or not (and at what point) I should acknowledge receipt of my messages.

In some cases, I apparently thought it was better to delay ACKing the message until the process has completely processed the message and either generated a result or produced an error. In other cases, I ACK the message as soon as I get it, which means I could lose it if there was a failure between the acknowledgement and the actual processing of the message. If I don't ACK it and hit an error, the message might be redelivered later. I'm not sure that's always desirable, given I often don't know what's in my messages (they're generic, but of specific "types").

Ugh. Any helpful hints on when it's appropriate to ACK an incoming message?

Thanks for the great help! (and all that for free ;)

Jon Brisbin
Portal Webmaster
NPC International, Inc.