What is Zeromq? explain the socket types of Zeromq

ZeroMQ is a library used to implement messaging and communication systems between applications and processes - fast and asynchronously.

If you have past experience with other application messaging solutions such as RabbitMQ, it might come a little bit challenging to understand the exact position of ZeroMQ.


When compared to some much larger projects, which offer all necessary parts of enterprise messaging, ZeroMQ remains as just a lightweight and fast tool to craft your own.

ZeroMQ Socket Types

ZeroMQ differs in the way its sockets work. Unlike the synchronous way the
regular sockets work, ZeroMQ’s socket implementation “present an abstraction
of an asynchronous message queue”.


The way these sockets work depend on the type of socket chosen. And flow
of messages being sent depend on the chosen patterns, of which there are four:

• Request/Reply Pattern: Used for sending a request and receiving subsequent replies for each one sent.
  
  
  
• Publish/Subscribe Pattern: Used for distributing data from a single process (e.g. publisher) to multiple recipients (e.g. subscribers).
  
  
  
• Pipeline Pattern: Used for distributing data to connected nodes.
  
  
  
• Exclusive Pair Pattern: Used for connecting two peers together, forming a pair.

ZeroMQ Transport Types

ZeroMQ offers four different types of transport for communication. These are:

• In-Process (INPROC): Local (in-process) communication transport.
  
  
• Inter-Process (IPC): Local (inter-process) communication transport.
  
  
• TCP: Unicast communication transport using TCP.
  
  
• PGM: Multicast communication transport using PGM.