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ACK Command Overview

Purpose

The ACK command is a critical component of EnSync's reliable event processing system, providing the mechanism for clients to acknowledge successful processing of events. This acknowledgment is essential for maintaining delivery guarantees and enabling proper event tracking across distributed systems.

Key Capabilities

Reliable Event Processing

The ACK command completes the event delivery cycle, confirming that an event has been successfully processed and should not be redelivered. This confirmation is crucial for implementing exactly-once processing semantics.

Position Tracking

When a client acknowledges an event, the system updates the client's position in the event stream. This position tracking enables the system to resume event delivery from the correct point after disconnections or failures.

Queue Management

Acknowledgments trigger queue management operations, including removing events from processing queues and potentially refilling queues with new events when thresholds are reached.

Resource Optimization

By acknowledging events, clients enable the system to free resources associated with delivered events, including memory cache entries and processing state.

Technical Implementation

The ACK command works by:

  1. Authenticating the client using their client ID

  2. Verifying that the client is currently processing the specified event

  3. Removing the event from the client's processing queue in Valkey

  4. Updating the client's position in the persistent storage

  5. Triggering asynchronous queue refill if necessary

This implementation ensures atomic and consistent event processing across Redis and database layers, preventing race conditions where the database might reflect an acknowledgment but the event is still in the Redis queue.

Integration Points

The ACK command integrates with:

  • Authentication System: Verifies client identity and permissions

  • Valkey Event Store: Removes acknowledged events from processing queues

  • Position Tracking System: Updates client position in persistent storage

  • Queue Management: Triggers refill operations when necessary

  • Monitoring System: Records acknowledgment metrics for system health analysis

Use Cases

  • Confirming successful event processing

  • Implementing reliable event delivery patterns

  • Enabling exactly-once processing semantics

  • Managing client position in event streams

  • Optimizing system resource usage

  • Triggering follow-up actions after successful processing

  • SUB: Subscribes to events that will later be acknowledged

  • DEFER: Alternative to ACK when an event cannot be processed yet

  • DISCARD: Alternative to ACK when an event should be permanently removed

Last modified: 07 October 2025