1. Service Broker Lesson 11

2. Skills Matrix

3. Service Broker Service Broker, provides a solution to common problems with message delivery and consistency that occur when transferring transactional messages or data from one server to another. This technology allows SQL Server to implement its own architecture to create a queue-based message delivery system that guarantees delivery.

4. Service Broker Service Broker includes the infrastructure for asynchronous programming, which can be used for applications within a single database or a single instance, as well as for distributed applications. Service Broker also makes it easy to scale your application up or down to accommodate the amount of traffic it receives. –When a number of requests are queued up, you actually can implement more queue readers to process requests.

5. Queue Mechanism The notable feature of this queue mechanism means that SQL Server guarantees that messages will be submitted to and processed from the queue in the correct order.

6. Broker Architecture

7. Service Broker Most of the messages in a Service Broker conversation are the application-defined messages used to communicate between services. –Each message must comply with a message type format that was defined by a CREATE MESSAGE TYPE statement. –The set of message types allowed for a conversation is defined by the contract specified in the BEGIN DIALOG CONVERSATION statement.

9. Service Broker When designing a broker architecture, you must first define which messages you need in the application. You can specify which message type can be sent by the initiator and what can be returned by the target or destination.

10. Service Broker The messages sent will be submitted to a queue and processed by a service program. –To communicate from one service to the other, you also have to specify the route to get to that destination. –When defining which service can send and receive information from each other, you have to set up an agreement, called a contract.

11. Creating a Message Type You can create a message type using the CREATE MESSAGE TYPE statement. In creating these message types, you can define different types, depending on how you structure the message body.

12. Creating a Message Type The SQL Server Service Broker architecture supports the following message bodies: –None: No validation on the content takes place; you can send whatever you like in the body. –Header only: empty: This includes the header only; you send a message with an empty body. –Well-formed XML: The data in the message body needs to be well-formed XML. –Schema-bound XML: The data in the message body needs to be schema-validated XML. This means the message-body XML schema must exist on the server.

13. Creating a Queue You must create a queue as the next step in configuring a broker architecture. You can specify what should happen to the queue when you submit a message, which you can do by configuring its status and activation properties. CREATE QUEUE

14. Creating a Contract In a contract, you set up the agreement between the sender of a message and the recipient. –This contract defines which message type can be sent by the initiator and what can be returned by the target. CREATE CONTRACT contract_name

15. Creating a Service Now that you have configured queues, message types, and a contract, you can set up the service. A service references a contract. Service Broker uses the name of the service to route messages, deliver messages to the correct queue within a database, and enforce the contract for a conversation. If you are targeting multiple services to participate in the broker service, you need to create the routes between them.

16. Creating a Service You can assign multiple contracts to a service, as well. Service programs initiate conversations to this service using the contracts specified. If no contracts are specified, the service may only initiate conversations.

17. Create a Service Once the services are configured, you can specify the route between them if you communicate over multiple services. When not configured, you use the local database service and default service route. The CREATE SERVICE statement follows this syntax: CREATE SERVICE service_name

18. Creating a Route For outgoing messages, Service Broker determines the routing by checking the routing table in the local database. In a route, you specify the communication settings between services. Before creating a route, you should configure the HTTP endpoints by using the CREATE ENDPOINT statement.

19. Creating a Priority SQL Server 2008 offers a new conversation priority feature. The message priority may be set from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) with a default of 5. First you must enable the priority feature, then set the priority:

20. Using Service Broker After successfully configuring the broker service, you can start sending messages over the broker instance. Key components in this process are the queue and the service program.

21. Sending Messages You manage messages using a queue. To group messages, you initiate a dialog, in which you forward related messages. To identify a conversation, you use a unique identifier. You then have to end the conversation so the messages can be processed by the queue.

22. Receiving Messages Once you have the message submitted to the recipient, you have to retrieve it from the receiving queue. Retrieving a message from a queue, however, uses the RECEIVE statement, which processes every message. This message retrieval process may be complex, because you may want to retrieve messages from the queue one by one or all at once.

23. Receiving Messages The RECEIVE statement processes the message from the queue and stores it in the variable. –If the message type received is TicketRequest, you proceed by executing a stored procedure to which you pass the message. –The WAITFOR statement waits until receiving a message in the queue, while the RECEIVE statement with the TOP clause specifies how many messages you process at once.

24. Automating the Queue Processing To automate the queue processing, you can change the status of a queue (or specify this when you create the queue). When making changes to the queue, you execute the ALTER QUEUE statement,

25. SQL Server Service Broker Architecture As you probably noticed, the SQL Server Service Broker architecture requires a lot of syntax and SQL Server does not provide a graphical interface to configure queues, and so on. –However, you can review created queues and other related broker service objects in Object Explorer.

26. Summary In this lesson, you learned how to configure a Service Broker architecture. –A Service Broker architecture proves useful in an environment where you need a message-based system or a queue-based system. Since SQL Server disables features by default, you need to enable Service Broker on the database level before you can start using it.

27. Summary Because of security reasons, Service Broker, by default, communicates only on local servers. –If you want to allow external access, you need to configure an endpoint for Service Broker. –You learned how to do this in this lesson. –HTTP can use endpoints for SOAP requests, and endpoints can provide access to the database from any client that can explore and use a Web service.

28. Summary Service Broker works with message types, contracts, queues, and service programs. –On a queue, you can specify how an endpoint should be activated. –The entire configuration of the Web service, including the permissions and IP restrictions, are managed within SQL Server. –Users need to be granted permissions before they can connect to an endpoint.

29. Summary for Certification Examination Know how to enable, configure and work with the Service Broker. –Understand the Service Broker architecture and the components it consists of in terms of services, service programs, contracts, message types, and routing. Understand how to create a service. Know how to create a service by identifying which contract is used, and be able to configure and identify the CREATE SERVICE syntax. Understand how to create a queue. On a queue, you have the possibility to initiate the activation of the queue and specify the service program to use (stored procedure).

30. Summary for Certification Examination Understand how to create a contract. In a contract, you identify what message types the initiator can send and what can be returned by the sender. Understand how to create a message type. Message type bodies can be empty (i.e., header-only messages), or they may need to be well-formed XML or match an XML schema collection. Know how to initiate a conversation. When submitting messages to a queue, you need to create a conversation. Within a conversation, you can submit multiple messages that relate to each other.

31. Summary for Certification Examination Understand how to send and receive messages. –When sending and receiving messages, you use the SEND and RECEIVE keywords. –You need to fully understand the syntax, how to retrieve messages from a queue, and how to close the conversation when it has concluded.

32. Summary for Certification Examination Understand how to create and secure HTTP endpoints. When creating endpoints, you need to identify the virtual directory or path on the server, as well as configure the methods that can be used by the endpoint. Know that you manage within the endpoint configuration and that a user must have the appropriate permissions to connect to an endpoint.

33. Summary You can partition views in the same way you can partition tables and for the same reasons: store parts of your views on different spindles or even different servers.