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Software Engineering vocabulary · Data Structures and Algorithms

Queue

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/kjuː/nounCommon term

In software engineering, queue means: A 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.

In Turkish: kuyruk

How it is used

You enqueue (add) and dequeue (remove) items. In real systems, message queues such as RabbitMQ or Amazon SQS let services work at their own pace: jobs go into the queue and wait there. Pronounced like the letter Q.

Example sentences

  1. Email sending goes through a queue, so a slow mail server doesn't block checkout.

  2. There are 50,000 jobs stuck in the queue since the worker crashed.

Common collocations

  • message queue
  • add to the queue
  • job queue
  • queue up
  • stackA data structure where the last item added is the first one taken out (LIFO), like a pile of plates. You push items onto the top and pop them off the top.
  • data structureA way of organizing data in memory, such as an array, list, tree or hash map, so that certain operations are fast and simple.
  • microservicesAn architecture in which an application is built as many small, independent services, each with one job, that talk to each other over the network.
  • scalableAble to handle more users, data or traffic by adding resources, without a complete redesign and without becoming much slower.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Data Structures and Algorithms

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