Working on some project, I have started delving a lot with Microsoft SQL Server Broker for 2005. I can see that the initial learning curve is very very steep and it's very easy to give up on SSB initially. But if you are like myself, learning SSB, be patient. IMHO, the possible reasons of "not liking" SSB initially are as follows:

• Not having a decent GUI to develop it. (We are used to VS.Net, here you have only SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio (you can use Notepad or TextPad) and .sql file)
• No Project template/Wizard available (at least I don't know at the time of writing this) in SSMS.
• Very hard to debug when you try to implement the SSB on the distributed (remote) servers, especially when you deal with stored procs within SSB.

Despite of all above reasons, there are compelling reasons to use SSB if you are looking for performance, queuing (alternative to MSMQ) and scalability.

I sincerely hope that Microsoft makes the using of SSB easier in the SQL Server 2008. Really...

In future, I'll write up a few articles about the configuration, security, etc. related to SSB. So, stay tuned.

1 Comment

• Todd Kruse said Thursday, July 17, 2008 8:59:18 AM

  Have you used the SSB in Biztalk? We are going to need to do this in the near future and I can't find any examples for this.