MSMQ Part 1/2: Architecture and Simple Implementation Using VB
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MSMQ is a messaging solution that uses the store-forward style of distributed computing to share data across networks in terms of messages. In part one of this two part series, Liviu explains the architecture of an enterprise system in relation to MSMQ. He also shows us how to implement a simple message queuing application using Visual Basic 6 and the MSMQ COM objects.When Graham Bell invented the telephone, the whole world thought that this would bring an end to the problem of ineffective communication: you could pick up the phone, dial a number and talk to anybody at any time... until they realised one thing: what if nobody picked up the phone at the other end?
Transposed in the computing world, the concept of a network was looked upon as bringing the end of the "dark age" of the computing world... until the same type of problem occurred –- what happens if your network communication fails?
There was the good old X.25 protocol, IPX/SPX, TCP/IP, and many other protocols, with each one claiming to have the solution to all communication problems. They nearly did back then, because things were a lot simpler than they are today: as long as you had a connection to the other end, you could make the world move as you wanted it (ok, maybe you couldn't – but you could’ve simulated it at least!). However, if your connection dropped out, it was down to each program(mer) to develop its own local caching system and fail-retry mechanism (both of these were a pain to implement).
In this article we're going to take a look at MSMQ, which is a messaging solution that uses the store-forward style of distributed computing to share data across networks in terms of messages. To implement the examples shown in this article I will assume that you’re familiar with the setup of an enterprise architecture based on the Microsoft platform as well as Visual Basic and COM. You should have Windows 2000 server and Visual Basic 6.0 installed as well as MSMQ and the message queue explorer, which we will look at during this article.
Next: MSMQ Architecture >>
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