Klaus Aschenbrenner is following up on his Pro SQL Server 2005 Service Broker book with an update for 2008. The book is already available for pre-order on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Server-2008-Service-Broker/dp/1590599993 and will contain a troubleshooting and administration chapter writen by yours truly

Almost two years ago I have posted the original Troubleshooting dialogs post in this blog (back in the day when it was hosted at MSDN). I have often referenced this post when I was asked to help investigate some Service Broker issue, and I have seen others referencing it. Although it lacked a lot of details it was a good starting point for anybody who was asking itself ‘The messages don’t get through, wonder what’s wrong…’

It is time for an updated entry on this topic because the bar was raised to a whole new level: the Service Broker Diagnostics Tool was shipped in the November CTP of SQL Server 2008!

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Now that the SQL Server 2008 CTP is no longer a virtual image but a true install and the quality of this CTP is near ship quality many of you are probably going to look at testing existing applications on SQL Server 2008 and perhaps start coding some pilot projects exploring the new features in SQL Server 2008. For the distributed applications Service Broker supports one question arrises immedeatly: is Service Broker in SQL Server 2008 compatible with SQL Server 2005?

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I’ve been away for the last couple of weeks and I had no time to update this blog when the latest SQL Server 2008 CTP release has been made available (download at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/prodinfo/download.mspx), so the news that this CTP was released is probably no longer news for most of you.

Why this release is so important for Service Broker fans is that the diagnostics tool is contained in it: ssbdiagnose.exe. The best part is that this tool works with and can diagnose SQL Server 2005 deployments as well as SQL Server 2008, so you can actually use it to troubleshoot your existing projects and sites. The usage of this tool is straightforward once you get past the complex command line syntax, and I will cover this soon with a more lengthy tutorial post dedicated to it.

Klaus has announced that he will release an update on his ‘Pro SQL Server 2005 Service Broker’ book with changes covering new features, revisiting some of the 2005 features like Query Notifications with more detailed coverage and much more. Not only that, but his announcement at http://www.csharp.at/blog/PermaLink,guid,a863c47b-2cfd-4395-bb32-e87bf33d6efe.aspx actually invites you to post back comments with what would you like to see in the new book.

The CU3 of SQL Server 2005 SP2 was just released on the web, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939537

It contains an update to Service Broker:

The title of the fix is derived from the original incident case, but the fix is actualy for the one case that would lead to ‘leaked’ conversation endpoints on the target in remote scenarios (communication between two different SQL Server instances) was fixed. The case fixed is when the pattern of message exchange is correct:

– Initiator sends one or more messages

– Target issue END CONVERSATION and sends the EndDialog message

– Initiator receives the EndDialog and responds by issuing it’s own END CONVERSATION

The defect was that if the initiator issues the END CONVERSATION within 1 (one) seconds of the target sending the EndDialog message, the target endpoint was ‘leaked’.

Note that this fix does not address local cases (two databases within the same SQL Server instance) nor the case of remote ‘incorrect’ message exchange pattern, when the initiator ends the conversation first w/o ever receiving any message from the target.