Creating Service Broker Services

The definition of a Service Broker service includes the names of the contracts for which the

service is a target. A target service represents an address that accepts requests for the tasks

identified by the contracts that the service specifies. An initiating service represents a return

address for a conversation with a target service.

A service represents a business process as a distinct set of tasks. Each contract within the

service represents a specific task. A service can specify more than one contract, and a contract

can be used by more than one service.

Each service uses a queue to store messages. Messages sent to the service are delivered to the

queue. In general, applications are easiest to implement when only one service uses a given

queue. However, for flexibility, Service Broker allows multiple services to specify the same

queue. In this case, the application either treats all messages of the same type the same way, or

inspects both the message-type name and the service name to determine how to process the

message. This strategy can be convenient when an application supports multiple versions of

the same service.

The network format for a message includes the name of the service. Therefore, service names

are often chosen to avoid collation issues and naming conflicts. For more information on

naming, see

Naming Service Broker Objects.

To create a service, you must do the following:

1. Create message types that define the data that can be sent back and forth.

2. Create a contract that identifies the message types that can be used, and which endpoint

can send them, in order to accomplish a particular task.

3. Create an application to receive, process, and send messages as necessary to accomplish

the given task.

4. Create a queue to store the incoming messages for the service. You can associate the

queue with an activation stored procedure so that the broker automatically activates the

stored procedure to process messages as messages arrive.

5. Create a service and associate it with the queue that will receive the messages for the

service. The service exposes the contracts that define the tasks that the service will

perform on behalf of other services. The service doesn’t need to specify contracts for

tasks that the service requests from other services.