Oracle AQ dequeuing an array

Question

Good day, respective all!

Environment: Oracle 18XE 64-bit for Windows.

I have a question about dequeueing an array of messages from persistent queue. It’s a simple point-to-point messaging. Queue is “single_consumer”, without propagation.

I registered my PL/SQL callback function. I need to know an exact size of array of messages to dequeue in every call of my callback function from Oracle AQ internal job.

And I found the only legal way how to have done it. And this way is to register callback with qosflags parameter of sys.aq$reg_info equal to dbms_aq.NTFN_QOS_PAYLOAD.

Here is the registration PL/SQL block:

declare 
    v_qosflags number :=  dbms_aq.NTFN_QOS_PAYLOAD;
    r_info SYS.AQ$_REG_INFO;
   begin
      r_info := SYS.AQ$_REG_INFO(
                'STERN.FOUNDERS_QUEUE',
                DBMS_AQ.NAMESPACE_AQ,
                'plsql://stern.dosomecalc',
                HEXTORAW('FF')
                );
       r_info.qosflags := v_qosflags; 
       r_info.ntfn_grouping_class := dbms_aq.NTFN_GROUPING_CLASS_TIME ;  
       r_info.ntfn_grouping_value := 60;
       r_info.ntfn_grouping_type := dbms_aq.NTFN_GROUPING_TYPE_SUMMARY ;    
       
       DBMS_AQ.REGISTER (
          SYS.AQ$_REG_INFO_LIST(
                     r_info
             ),
          1
          );
 end;

Here is the declaration of callback procedure. It is a standard declaration:

create or replace procedure dosomecalc
(context    RAW
                             ,reginfo    SYS.AQ$_REG_INFO
                             ,descr      SYS.AQ$_DESCRIPTOR
                             ,payload    raw
                             ,payloadl   NUMBER)

Now, thankfully to qosflags parameter initialized with dbms_aq.NTFN_QOS_PAYLOAD ,my callback function is registered in such a way that I always can see real size of messages to dequeue in callback session. This size is evaluated as counting size of descr.msgid_array part of descr parameter. Without setting of qosflags during registration to some value - this part of descr parameter always comes empty to callback procedure call.

Once I know the real size of messages array , I can use it in

Dbms_aq.dequeue_array(…, array_size => descr.msgid_array.count,…)

dequeuing call inside my callback function.

Than, after investigating contents of descr parameter, I found in it an ntfnsRecdInGrp element, and decided that ntfnsRecdInGrp is always equal to descr.msgid_array.count, and just made for programmer’s convenience, just for duplicate descr.msgid_array.count.

AQ documentation says:

msgid_array  - Group notification message ID list 
ntfnsRecdInGrp - Notifications received in group

That was why I decided that they are equal by value. It was a my mistake. When I use callback with array size equal to descr.msgid_array.count – everything is OK. With ntfnsRecdInGrp – no. Sometimes descr.msgid_array.count and ntfnsRecdInGrp equal to each other, sometimes not.

Now the question is:

What is the meaning of ntfnsRecdInGrp part of descr parameter?

Why it is not the same as msgid_array.count?

Thanks in advance.