Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Notification Services

Rating:
Summary: Definitely the "SQL NS bible"
Review: Everyone working with SQL Server Notification Service should have this book on the shelf. It's just a must for the toolbox of every SQL NS developer, whether you're a newbie or an experienced SQL NS developer.

For people starting with SQL NS, it's a great introduction that goes in-depth on a lot of topics. You get known to a lot of concepts that are crucial to understand the architecture of SQL NS and the book introduces the overall development process in a step-by-step fashion. It also includes useful tips to solve problems and tips to simplify the overall development process and debugging.

Experienced SQL NS developers should have it as well as a welcome addition to the SQL NS Books Online and they'll learn a big deal of debugging and tuning tips.

SQL Server DBAs will find useful information on performance scaling and deployment of SQL NS in their enterprises.

And of course, Shyam has a unique understanding of the product he has been building for four years now on the SQL NS team at Microsoft.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Notification Services Developers
Review: I would highly recommend this book for anybody developing Sql Server 2000 Notifications Services applications. This book fills the gaps in the Books Online, which, for a large scale application are very important.

The book is structured to provide quick, step-by-step implementation instructions as well as detailed explanations of the hows and whys of Notification Services.

I was particularly grateful for Part III of the book that details optimization, deployment and administration requirements.

Another invaluable part of the book is the chapter on setting up your development environment. I had to do my first application before the publication of this book and I will tell you that had I had this book then, the time I would have saved would have paid for the price of the book many times over.

Rating:
Summary: Converts Your System to a Push Orientation
Review: Suppose you're in charge of inventory at a store. Wouldn't it be nice of your computer system could notify you immediately that you're selling a lot of something that normally sells very slowly?

This is exactly the situation that Micro SQL Server 2000 Notification Services is designed to handle. It is a platform that includes a notification engine to tell selected individuals about selected changes in the information in the database. Computer systems normally work in a pull oriented architecture i.e. you go to the web and ask for the sales figures for each inventory item to see if there is an anomoly. Notification services changes this model to a push orientation. You subscribe (we don't want to be doing SPAM) and based on the criteria you select you are automatically notified of changes in the underlying data structure.

This book, is a complete guide to Notification Services written by the head of the development team. It's the usual giant computer software book, complete with lots of code samples and a CD-ROM. It's everything you need to know, and surprisingly well written.

Rating:
Summary: serious XML usage
Review: The motivation for this product is the desire by many users to be informed of certain types of data, or when such data changes, and where the data is on a different machine. An elementary case that you may have used is to sign up for a newsletter. But that is very primitive compared to what the book describes that SQL Server can do for you. That newsletter is basically a binary operation. Usually, you cannot specify more precisely what within that newsletter you're interested in.

But Pather shows how you have far more expressive power in your NS subscription. and how NS takes in these requests, along with various data feeds, and applies the requests to that data, to craft responses.

The book gives a heavy and natural use of XML for the user to encode her subscription preferences. It is for such things that XML is well suited. It also shows why Microsoft made a good decision to standardise on XML as its messaging language. On the server, we see considerable details about how to parse and apply the requests. The book is not a trivial read. Pather indicates that you may have serious coding on the server, using C# as the language of choice.

Rating:
Summary: This is *The* SQL-NS Book
Review: This is a book well worth reading from beginning to end, from preface to appendix. I have done so twice, with the result that I have learned SQL-NS well enough to explain its concepts and architecture to my teammates and higher-ups and to embark upon design and development of notification apps of my own. Mr. Pather puts mastery of this platform within your reach. His pedagogical approach is exemplary, for its organization, pacing, clarity, style and tone. And he covers absolutely everything you need to know about SQL-NS. I wish every computer book out there were written this way.

Rating:
Summary: No serious SQLNS developer should be without this book
Review: This is an excellent resource that no serious SQL NS developer should be without. Written by the lead developer of the product, this book offers great detail into the in's and out's of creating SQL NS applications. For example in one chapter, you'll look inside the notification generator and learn how to optimize it for your application. Shyam also clearly explains other topics such as how to :
- create Custom Hosted Event Providers
- use the built in tools to monitor your application
- create a subscription management application

All 600+ pages are packed with great information.


Rating:
Summary: SQL Notification is not so scary after this book
Review: This is one of the resources which make SQL notification a viable option to be used by mare mortals. If you want to use SQL notification, you must have this book. Period.