Did deduplication occur through the deduplication mechanism or through the implementation of idempotency? What is the difference?

Deduplication and idempotency are different concepts, although both help avoid unwanted repeated effects.

• Deduplication is the process of identifying and removing duplicate data or operations. For example, if several identical messages arrive in the system, deduplication allows processing only one of them, ignoring the rest.

• Idempotency is a property of an operation where its multiple executions produce the same result as a single execution. This means that a repeated call to the operation will not further change the system's state.

If deduplication occurs through a deduplication mechanism, it means the system explicitly tracks and filters out repeated requests or data (for example, by a unique identifier).

If it is achieved through the implementation of idempotency, it means the operations are designed so that repeated execution does not lead to errors or unwanted changes, and repeats are simply safe.

Difference: deduplication is filtering repeats, idempotency is resilience to repeated calls without the need for filtering.