Dead Letter Queues

Concepts: paDeadLetterQueue

What They Want to Hear 'A dead letter queue (DLQ) is where events go when they cannot be processed. Instead of crashing the pipeline or blocking the stream, the bad event is moved to a separate topic for investigation. This keeps the main pipeline flowing. I monitor DLQ depth as a health metric: if it grows, something is systematically wrong. I reprocess DLQ events after fixing the root cause.' That is the answer. DLQ = safety valve. Monitor depth. Fix root cause, then replay.