SQL Server Notification Services

1
SQL Server Notification Services

• Andy Potter
• Senior System Consultant
• SQL Server Notification Services
• Intellinet

2
Agenda

• Notification applications in general
• Adding value to the enterprise
• Business and technical scenarios of note
• About the Notification Services Platform
• Notification Services platform overview
• Business value of this platform
• Resources
• Demonstration of sample applications

3
Getting InformationNo notifications connected
requestor
Web
News
Request
My Device
ERP, CRM
Response
LOB, Rpt
4
Getting InformationPush notifications all or
nothing
Web
News
My Device
Push
SPAM
ERP, CRM
LOB, Rpt
5
Getting InformationNotifications subscriber
preference
Web
Notification Application
My Device(s) of Choice
News
ERP, CRM
A new class of applications that deliver
personalized and timely information to any device
LOB, Rpt
6
Notification Applications
Subscribers
Subscriptions(millions)
Source Systems
Subscriber Devices and Systems
Match
7
Why Invest In Notifications

• Send critical information to customers, partners,
  and employees
• Form proactive relationships with customers and
  clients using personalized, timely services
• Make it easier for customers to initiate business
  transactions with you
• Empower employees with information whenever and
  wherever they need it

8
Consumer Applications

• Might scale to millions of subscriptions
• Automatically send notifications to customers
• Financial Services
• Receive and react to personal portfolio changes
  and current market conditions
• Travel and Hospitality
• Flight arrivals, schedule changes
• Electronic Commerce
• Search criteria, buy and sell

9
Line of Business Applications

• Monitor business data
• Alert the appropriate person or system when
  action is required
• Define the events that occur in the LOB
  application
• Which events are of likely interest to
  subscribers or other applications?

10
Business Intelligence Applications

• Track critical company data
• Numeric data reaches a threshold
• Focus on Key Performance Indicators

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Employee Communication

• Keep employees informed
• Updates to projects
• Timely research
• Alert to actions that may be required

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Real World Implementations

• Monitor ETL processing
• KPI Threshold alerts for a data warehouse
• Monitoring Business Rule enforcement between two
  applications

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Notification Services Platform

• Platform to develop and deploy rich, highly
  scalable notification applications
• Declarative programming model
• Based upon XML and T-SQL
• Execution engine
• Based upon SQL Server 2000 and .NET Framework
• Maintenance tasks built in

14
Application Overview
Subscribers
Subscriptions(millions)
Source Systems
Subscriber Devices and Systems
Match
15
Why Use SQL Server Notification Services?

• Rapid time to market
• Ease of development
• Rich feature set
• Scalable and reliable
• Flexible and extensible

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Rapid Time To Market

• Low or no additional licensing cost
• Included in SQL Server license
• Notification Services framework provides most of
  the core infrastructure
• Leverage existing systems
• No need to rip and replace
• Heterogeneous environments okay

Prototype, build and deploy scalable notification
applications quickly
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Ease Of Development

• Use well-known tools and techniques
• Integrated experience with Visual Studio
• Leverage SQL Server expertise
• Developing T-SQL procedures
• Tuning the relational database
• Managing a SQL Server database

Short learning curve, leverage existing
development experience
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Rich Feature Set

• Management features
• Queue management
• Failures and retry logic
• Windows services

Rich application model with various notification
application features, plus manageability
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Mix And Match The Match Rule Types
Subscribers want to know whenever event
occurs Can add relevant info to it
Notifications trigger whenever event occurs
Triggered by event Occurrence
If MSFT gt 25
Notifications trigger however subscriber requests
them
Time zones built-in Calendar recurrence
patterns Settable intervals between notifications
_at_ 900 AM each Mon-Fri
Triggered by day and time
Often combined with Day and Time schedule rules
Can pull info from cumulative events
Sensitive to event history
Highest MSFT price today
Can control intervals between notifications
Often combined with Day and Time schedule rules
Sensitive to subscription history
Wait a day to repeat
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Rich Feature SetDelivery Richness

• Choice of content formatting (CF)
• Device specific
• Language specific

Rich Formatting

• To application server, cell phone, wireless PDA,
  desktop PC, and/or e-mail account

• Combine notifications sent to the same user into
  one notification

Digest Notifications

• Send daily summary of my portfolio
• Send summary of docs modified since I last
  connected

• Same message to many subscribers
• Format once, deliver to many

Multicast Notifications

• Weather report for New Orleans area
• Traffic on I-95
• Corporate newswire

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Scalable And Reliable

• Notification Services generation exceeds any
  protocol delivery
• Read performance whitepaper for details
• Standard best practices for tuning SQL Server
  databases
• Support for various deployment configurations
• H/W to balance workload, high availability

Scalable and reliable notification engine
out-of-the-box
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Flexible And Extensible

• API for application developers to use
• Subscriber, devices, subscriptions, events API
• Native managed API
• COM interoperability layer
• Extensible components architecture
• Custom event provider support
• Custom delivery protocol support

Integrate into virtually any environment
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Notification Services Summary

• Notification Services is a platform
• Enables rapid development of robust, scalable
  notification applications
• Easy to use declarative programming model
• Numerous deployment configurations

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Train Your StaffLearn about Notification Services

• Notification Services Website
• http//www.microsoft.com/sql/ns
• DevelopMentor offers a 3-day course
• http//www.develop.com/dm/course.asp?id163
• MSDN whitepapers
• Search for articles beginning with Notification
  Services at http//msdn.microsoft.com/library/def
  ault.asp?url/library/en-us/dnsql2k/html/sql_sampl
  e_quickstart.asp
• Notification Services Capacity Planning and
  Performance Tuning
• Notification Services Quick Start Guide for
  Sample Installation

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Community Resources

• Public newsgroup
• microsoft.public.sqlserver.NotificationSvcs
• or
• http//communities.microsoft.com/newsgroups/defaul
  t.asp?icpSQL
• Community page
• http//www.gotdotnet.com
• E-mail suggestions
• mailtoNSWish_at_microsoft.com