Asynchronous Invocation
A method of invoking AWS services where the call returns immediately, allowing the caller to continue processing without waiting for the operation to complete.
Description
Asynchronous invocation in the AWS ecosystem allows for operations to be executed in the background, enabling applications to remain responsive and efficient. This approach is particularly useful for tasks that may take an indeterminate amount of time to complete, such as image processing with AWS Lambda or sending notifications via Amazon SNS. Unlike synchronous invocation, where the caller must wait for the execution to finish, asynchronous invocation allows for immediate return of control to the caller. This can enhance application performance by decoupling the execution of tasks, thereby improving scalability and resource utilization. For example, when an application uploads a video to Amazon S3, it may trigger a Lambda function to process that video. The upload completes quickly, while the processing occurs independently, reducing wait times for users. As a result, asynchronous invocation is a fundamental design pattern for building responsive and scalable cloud applications on AWS.
Examples
- Uploading a large file to Amazon S3 triggers an AWS Lambda function to process the file without blocking the user's upload experience.
- An API call to Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) sends a message to multiple subscribers without waiting for each subscriber to confirm receipt.
Additional Information
- Asynchronous invocation is supported by services like AWS Lambda, Amazon SQS, and Amazon SNS.
- It helps in achieving high throughput and efficient resource utilization by allowing multiple tasks to run concurrently.