Notification Services Tutorial
The Notification Services tutorial teaches you how to build a simple Notification Services application. The tutorial uses a SQL Server Management Studio solution to make it easy to edit tutorial files and then build the solution using SQL Server Management Studio Object Explorer.
What You Will Learn
In this tutorial, you will build a weather notification application. This application will let users subscribe to and receive weather notifications for individual cities.
You will start with a minimal application definition file (ADF) and use a predefined instance configuration file (ICF) to create an instance of Notification Services that hosts the weather application. The information in the ICF and ADF is compiled and then used to create an instance database and an application database. The databases are used to store data and run the application.
You will then update the ADF to describe the weather event, notification, and subscription data, and configure application execution settings. Every time that you update the application, you apply the changes to the application database.
In the last two lessons of this tutorial, you will add subscriber and subscription data, and then add event data and view the resulting notifications.
This is a simple application that does not use some of the more advanced features of Notification Services, such as digest or multicast delivery, custom event providers, custom content formatters, and custom delivery protocols. However, this tutorial does show the core steps for building a notification application that uses Notification Services.
Requirements
Before you start the tutorial, you should be familiar with Notification Services concepts and terminology. To learn about Notification Services, see Introducing SQL Server Notification Services.
This tutorial is intended to be used on a single computer that has all the required software installed. Make sure that you have done the following:
- You have installed the Database Engine, Notification Services, and Workstation Components. For more information, see Installing SQL Server 2005.
- You have installed the Notification Services samples. For more information, see Installing Samples.
- You have started an instance of the Database Engine. For more information, see Starting and Restarting Services.
Note
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Contents
This tutorial is divided into 11 lessons. You must complete all tutorial lessons in order to develop a working Notification Services application.
- Lesson 1: Opening and Examining the Tutorial Solution
In this lesson, you open the SQL Server Management Studio solution and examine the files in the solution.
- Lesson 2: Performing an Initial Build of the Tutorial Instance
In this lesson, you review the application definition file (ADF) for the Weather application and the instance configuration file (ICF) for the Tutorial instance of Notification Services, and then perform an initial build of the instance and application.
- Lesson 3: Adding an Event Class
In this lesson, you add an event class to the ADF that describes event data.
- Lesson 4: Adding a Notification Class
In this lesson, you add a notification class to the ADF that describes notification data, formatting, and delivery.
- Lesson 5: Adding a Subscription Class
In this lesson, you add a subscription class to the ADF that describes subscription data and the rules that generate notifications.
- Lesson 6: Adding an Event Provider
In this lesson, you add a non-hosted event provider declaration to the ADF. This is used to identify events added using the event submission stored procedures.
- Lesson 7: Configuring the Generator and Distributor
In this lesson, you specify where the application's generator and distributor run, and the polling interval for the distributor.
- Lesson 8: Altering Application Execution Settings
In this lesson, you specify generator, distributor logging, and data removal settings.
- Lesson 9: Registering, Enabling, and Starting the Instance
In this lesson, you register, enable, and start the instance of Notification Services.
- Lesson 10: Adding Subscribers and Subscriptions
In this lesson, you add subscribers to the instance database and subscriptions to the application database.
- Lesson 11: Submitting Events to the Weather Application
In this lesson, you add events to the application and then view the resulting notifications.
See Also
Other Resources
SQL Server Notification Services Samples
Introducing SQL Server Notification Services
Building Notification Solutions
Deploying Notification Services
Administering Notification Services