Alternative to Notification Services

Question

What's a good alternative to Notification Services now that Microsoft has removed it from Sql Server 2008. I don't want to use the 2005 version or build my own from scratch. What third party tools fill this niche?

Some of the NS functionality is now available through RS. However, our system requires "on demand" triggering of sending notifications. For example, any time a row in a table is added or updated, a series of data-driven emails need to be sent out.

Data-driven subscriptions in Reporting Services is halfway there (msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/…) but we need to be able to trigger sending reports at will as opposed to a pre-set schedule.

Answer 1

The theory goes that Notifications Services was removed become it was made obsolete by the Reporting Services. And in truth the RS can fulfill quite a chunk of the NS role. Have you investigated how far can you ride the RS and replace your NS solution by it?

Answer 2

Why not use SSIS and set it up as a job in SQL Server Agent? Then, you can use sp_start_job to kick it off whenever you wanted, set up a trigger to handle it, or schedule it.

You can use SSIS variables, and do the xp_cmdshell stored proc using dtexec to set the variable. Or, you can use the trigger to load up a table, do a foreach in SSIS and truncate the table after each run.

Answer 3

You could use sp_send_dbmail within your SQL code to send email notifications according to your logic:

exec msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail
    @Profile_Name = 'Default',
    @Recipients     = N'[email protected]',
    @subject = N'This step, with ' + CAST(@NumRecordsGenerated AS varchar(10)) + ' records generated, has succeeded!'

Answer 4

You could roll your own notification service using the Notification Framework project from CodePlex

http://nab.codeplex.com/