The context was a RDBMS, not Redis. Redis makes a perfectly suitable queue, I agree. The problem with using a RDBMS as a queue is it results in a continuous po

The context was a RDBMS, not Redis. Redis makes a perfectly suitable queue, I agree. The problem with using a RDBMS as a queue is it results in a continuous polling loop, it's incredibly slow, guaranteeing only a single subscribers gets a message is incredibly complex (you need to employ locking mechanisms yourself), etc. Using Redis you can just BRPOP and it's perfect.