The Rational Guide to SQL Server 2005 Service Broker: Beta Preview

Roger Wolter has written several major articles on SQL Server 2005 Service Broker, and so, when I ordered this book I wondered if it would be a re-working on those articles-NOT! This book is completely new material and it is great. Mr Wolter finds the balance of being able to write real prose that is not overly chatty. It is dense and to the point, and yet readable. When the subject comes to Service Oriented Architecture, Roger resists the urge, apparent in other authors, to write hundreds of pages of abstract statements. Instead he is able to explain his views on SOA in a matter of a couple dozens pages, which he illustrates with concrete code. Oh yes the code! The book is filled with code examples that have the look and feel of real production code-which is regrettably rare in computer books. The code provides good examples of SQL Server 2005 new TRY CATCH syntax and the WAITFOR command. My only quibble is that keywords in the code are inconsistently cased, but that doesn't dimminish my rating of five stars Service Broker is a remarkable product. It is an asynchronous transactional messaging system that is nevertheless still SQL! If you feel too busy to learn it, get this book. Roger wastes very few words in bringing you up to speed and beyond.

Service Broker is a rather new concept in database development that Microsoft is building into SQL Server 2005. It basically allows the creation of a whole new class of database operations that can be written in TSQL and which run asynchronously as part of a queued system. This concept adds a whole new dimension to SQL programming. It is an enormous extension to the standard capabilities of the language. As an example, a web server running an order entry application takes an order and puts it into the database. It quickly releases the web server to allow it to handle the next order. At the same time it puts information into a que to allow the back end processing of the order, inventory control, shipping, etc. to take place on a basis of operating when resources either on the database machine handing the order entry or an entirely different machine. This book is written by the Group Program Manager for SQL Server Service Broker. It is the first book available and is based on the Beta release of the software. As I write this, the third Beta for SQL Server 2005 is available on the Microsoft web site. This Beta includes Service Broker as described in this book.