Message Lifecycle

The diagram and steps below describe the the lifecycle of an Amazon SQS message, called Message A, from creation to deletion. Assume that a queue already exists.

Message Lifecycle

	Component 1 sends Message A to a queue and the message is redundantly distributed across the SQS servers.
	When Component 2 is ready to process a message, it retrieves messages from the queue, and Message A is returned. While Message A is being processed, it remains in the queue and is not returned to subsequent receive requests for the duration of the visibility timeout (see Visibility Timeout).
	Component 2 deletes Message A from the queue to avoid the message being received and processed again once the visibility timeout expires.

	Note
	SQS deletes messages that have been in a queue for more than 15 days.