I was looking for a better mechanism for notifying my desktop clients that a sql server table has changed. Exclude the option of an app server tier, I’m looking at solutions that fit into the existing thick client->Sql server model. I’m familiar with triggers and polling, but was hoping for something a bit smarter.
One option seems to be SqlDependency. I’m looking at that at the moment, but have seen a few mentions that it has “restrictions” and may be “unsuitable” for large numbers of changes. I’ve not found a lot of information on that, or many recent code examples.
What are you using for notification that a sql server table has been amended?
Unless you have a service, ie all chnages to tables go through it, then you are down to polling or dependancy. All dependancy does is hook into sql servers own table change code and fire a change event. The underlying mechanism is very simple, and can get swamped by a large number of changes, attempting to rationalise the changes in the event handler is problematic at best.
You might get somewhere with triggers to a “communications table”, where you could add the rationalisation logic, then use dependancy from there.
So instead of detecting a simple change to column1 in table1 you trigger an insert to an event record in your comms table.
It’s going to be a PIA because you’ve excluded an app server tier, you’ve also drastically constrained your options for doing something efficient and nice.