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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Dead-letter queue

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In software engineering, dead-letter queue means: A separate queue that holds messages which could not be processed normally, for later inspection, correction or retry.

In Turkish: işlenemeyen mesaj kuyruğu

How it is used

Used in messaging systems. Moving a message there does not itself repair it or guarantee eventual delivery.

Example sentences

  1. The malformed order message moved to the dead-letter queue after the retry limit.

    The failed message is isolated so normal processing can continue.

  2. After fixing the schema mapping, we replayed messages from the dead-letter queue.

    Recovery follows a correction rather than blindly retrying the same failure.

Common collocations

  • monitor a dead-letter queue
  • dead-letter queue message
  • queueA data structure where the first item added is the first one taken out (FIFO), like people waiting in line. Also a system that holds tasks or messages until they are processed.
  • error handlingCode that deals with things going wrong, such as a failed request or bad input, so the program can recover, retry or show a clear message instead of crashing.

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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