are named pipes (mkfifo) the predecessor of RabbitMQ?

Question

Is RabbitMQ, for inter process communication, like pipes and named pipes? How does RabbitMQ compare to named pipes? Except distributed systems.

(RabbitMQ, for those who haven't encountered it, is an open source, middleware, enterprise message broker that speaks AMQP.)

RabbitMQ is interesting, however this question makes no sense at all. — Rui F Ribeiro, Dec 14 '15 at 13:08
Now you know what RabbitMQ is, mikeserv. Interestingly, a new colleague at work asked me pretty much this question just under a fortnight ago. It's basically "I understand the Unix pipes and FIFOs paradigm. This new RabbitMQ thing, it's simply just like them, ne?" It was an attempt to fit RabbitMQ into paradigms that one already understands, in order to understand it. — JdeBP, Dec 14 '15 at 13:09
JdeBP sees it right. I understand UNIX basics and now wonder how RabbitMQ compares to that. — Sybil, Dec 14 '15 at 13:13
Fyodor - @JdeBP - ok. sorry guys. i didn't understand the question - and for the past couple of days there have been some attempts at *name-dropping* or something here in just weird looking advertising type questions. sorry i was suspicious - but your question looked weird! anyway, you guys both got my vote now. my sincerest apologies. — mikeserv, Dec 14 '15 at 14:22

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Is RabbitMQ, for inter process communication, like pipes and named pipes?

No. That's not the best way to comprehend RabbitMQ, or indeed message-passing broker-based middlewares in general.

If you are looking for a paradigm to hang your metaphorical hat on in order to start understanding RabbitMQ and its ilk, don't think of low-level IPC at all.

Think about Unix mail.

Programs generate messages.
They have headers and bodies.
They even have (optional) message IDs, MIME content types, timestamps, and reply-to addresses.
They get sent to a broker.
The broker routes them, and according to the routing topology they get dropped into queues, from which they are retrieved by other programs.
There are fan-out exchanges which create multiple copies of messages to be sent onwards.
There are even dead-letter boxes.

It's not quite mail, of course, once one gets into the details.

The routing topology is under client program control, using the same client-server protocol as is used for sending and receiving messages.
The DNS is, largely, not involved.
It's not store-and-forward.
Fan-out exchanges are only very roughly like mailing lists.
Client programs can use the protocol to purge queues (https://askubuntu.com/a/707523/43344) and to set TTLs on messages.
There are various degrees of durability and persistence.
The reception of messages can involve handshaking, positive and negative, and programmatically forced redelivery.
There's a security paradigm for controlling which clients have what access to what parts of the infrastructure, allowing administrators to (say) restrict where clients logged in with user credentials "JdeBP" can send messages to.

But mail is a good first approximation for understanding the concepts, far better than starting by comparing to IPC or RPC subsystems, anyway.

are named pipes (mkfifo) the predecessor of RabbitMQ?

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