Why Microsoft abandoned Notification Services in SQL Server 2008 ?

Question

I invested quite a bit of time toying with NS introduced in SQL 2005 and found it to be excellent feature..

However , I hear MS has abandoned NS in 2008; Why ? and with what they are replacing it if any at all..

Answer 1

Deeply buried inside the readme file for the July CTP of Katmai, Microsoft quietly announced a departure from the normal feature depreciation plan. The readme stated that Notifications Services would no longer be included in the product. The following is an excerpt from that ReadMe file.

"SQL Server Notification Services will not be included as a component of SQL Server 2008, but will continue to be supported as part of the SQL Server 2005 product support life-cycle. Moving forward, support for key notification scenarios will be incorporated into SQL Server Reporting Services. Existing Reporting Services functionality, such as data driven subscriptions, addresses some of the notification requirements. Features to support additional notification scenarios may be expected in future releases."

Ref.

Answer 2

As Mitch already said, the official replacement for NS is RS. But I suggest you have a look at StreamInsight.