<p>I need to implement a queue using table. 
The business requirement is to have a single queue which will be accessed by 5-10 boxes to get the next job/jobs. There will not be more than 5000 jobs per day. Also, a batch of jobs should be "dequeued" at one time.</p>

<p>Just wondering what are the problem areas and issues I might run into as I havent done it before. If anyone has faced this/done this before, can you please point me to a design/sample implementation or issues that need to be taken care of.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

There are a lot of general purpose queuing or messaging services. Even if you want to implement your own system, you could try to have a look at a few others. The first thing that come to mind is JMS (
Java Message Service
) with implementations like
Apache ActiveMQ
,
OpenJMS
or
JBoss Messaging
. Then you have a lot of non-opensource offering as well.
Second thing that comes to mind is
Amazon Simple Queue Service
. There is a couple of products that implement the same kind of interface, like
django-queue-service
.
Good luck !