A study on Modern Messaging Systems- Kafka, RabbitMQ and NATS Streaming

TL;DR

This paper compares modern messaging systems Kafka, RabbitMQ, and NATS Streaming, analyzing their features, use cases, and differences to guide selection for real-time, scalable, fault-tolerant applications.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth comparative analysis of three popular messaging systems, aiding informed decision-making and highlighting future research directions.

Findings

Kafka excels in high-throughput streaming

RabbitMQ offers flexible messaging patterns

NATS Streaming provides low-latency messaging

Abstract

Distributed messaging systems form the core of big data streaming, cloud native applications and microservice architecture. With real-time critical applications there is a growing need for well-built messaging platform that is scalable, fault tolerant and has low latency. There are multiple modern messaging systems that have come up in the recent past, all with their own pros and cons. This has become problematic for the industry to decide which messaging system is the most suitable for a specific application. An in-depth study is required to decide which features of a messaging system meet the needs of the application. This survey paper outlines the modern messaging technologies and delves deep on three popular publisher/subscriber systems- Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ and NATS Streaming. The paper provides information about messaging systems, the use cases, similarities and differences of features to facilitate users to make an informed decision and also pave way for future research and development.