Amazon Kinesis

Service for processing data that arrives in real time.

Amazon Kinesis is a family of services for collecting, processing, and analyzing streaming data.

• Clickstream analytics
• IoT data processing
• Log streaming

• Used for streaming data processing
• Appears in real-time analytics contexts
• Serves a different purpose than batch processing

• Process large volumes of events with ordering and throughput in mind
• Implement stream processing through Lambda integration
• Differs from SQS in data retention and processing model

Amazon Kinesis is the general name for a family of services that collect, process, and analyze streaming data in real time. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is an order-preserving stream storage that holds data at shard-level throughput and can extend the retention period up to 365 days. Amazon Data Firehose (formerly Kinesis Data Firehose) is a fully managed delivery pipeline that automatically delivers streams to S3, Redshift, OpenSearch Service, and so on. Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink (formerly Kinesis Data Analytics) is an analytics platform that can execute real-time aggregation on streams using SQL or Apache Flink. Representative use cases include clickstream analysis on websites, ingestion of sensor data from IoT devices, aggregation and transport of application logs, and real-time fraud detection. When combined with Lambda, you can execute arbitrary processing triggered by the arrival of new records in the stream, allowing you to construct stream processing without keeping servers running. In the exam context, the difference in roles from SQS, SNS, and EventBridge is asked. The way Kinesis Data Streams differs from other messaging services is that it provides an "order-preserving, replayable stream". SQS is centered on "one-shot processing where messages are retrieved and deleted", SNS is centered on "delivery to multiple subscribers via pub/sub", and EventBridge is centered on "rule-based event routing". Pricing is usage-based on shard hours and data volume, making it unsuitable for use cases like small-scale form submissions or delivering a handful of messages.

• What is Amazon Kinesis Data Streams (AWS Official Documentation)
• Amazon Kinesis (AWS Official)

Last updated: 2026-06-07