Example#

Consider this architecture

While it is an incomplete architecture it does show a number of key points:

• Many related subjects are stored in a Stream
• Consumers can have different modes of operation and receive just subsets of the messages
• Multiple Acknowledgement modes are supported

A new order arrives on ORDERS.received, gets sent to the NEW Consumer who, on success, will create a new message on ORDERS.processed. The ORDERS.processed message again enters the Stream where a DISPATCH Consumer receives it and once processed it will create an ORDERS.completed message which will again enter the Stream. These operations are all pull based meaning they are work queues and can scale horizontally. All require acknowledged delivery ensuring no order is missed.

All messages are delivered to a MONITOR Consumer without any acknowledgement and using Pub/Sub semantics - they are pushed to the monitor.

As messages are acknowledged to the NEW and DISPATCH Consumers, a percentage of them are Sampled and messages indicating redelivery counts, ack delays and more, are delivered to the monitoring system.

Example Configuration#

Additional documentation introduces the nats utility and how you can use it to create, monitor, and manage streams and consumers, but for completeness and reference this is how you'd create the ORDERS scenario. We'll configure a 1 year retention for order related messages:

nats stream add ORDERS --subjects "ORDERS.*" --ack --max-msgs=-1 --max-bytes=-1 --max-age=1y --storage file --retention limits --max-msg-size=-1 --discard=old
nats consumer add ORDERS NEW --filter ORDERS.received --ack explicit --pull --deliver all --max-deliver=-1 --sample 100
nats consumer add ORDERS DISPATCH --filter ORDERS.processed --ack explicit --pull --deliver all --max-deliver=-1 --sample 100
nats consumer add ORDERS MONITOR --filter '' --ack none --target monitor.ORDERS --deliver last --replay instant