Customer Reviews

Pro MSMQ: Microsoft Message Queue Programming

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Pro MSMQ" is one of the only books currently out that gives an in depth overview of MSMQ. This book is basically split into two sections. One section gives some of the best information and reference material regarding the System. Messaging class for the .NET framework. The code snippets are very useful and give the reader a solid direction and foundation for extending the code to accomplish their objective using MSMQ. The other section is just as informative with regards to the Win API. I read this section, but most of my effort went into reading and using the example code from the System.Messaging section.

I found the book easy to read, concise, and very helpful in ramping up on the MSMQ technology. The chapter on creating and administering MSMQ was very useful and the diagrams made it easy to follow. The book also had a chapter on deploying and administration tools for MSMQ. The code snippets are all C# but a VB.NET developer should be able to convert the code examples with little effort. This book was very helpful for me in ramping up on MSMQ in a short timeframe for a project I was working on. I would definitely recommend this book as necessary reading for anyone who will be using MSMQ and .NET framework.

If you are familiar with MSMQ and looking for a good reference or new to MSMQ and want to learn how to use it this is the book for you. It has all the information in one place. You will find versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 covered. Code either in VB6, C#, VB .NET, or C++ is used with the .NET System Messaging Namespace, MSMQ API, and the MSMQ COM Component. . It starts with an introduction to message queuing, gives some scenarios where it might be used and describes the MSMQ architecture. Installing various versions of MSMQ is covered along with dependent or independent clients and servers. Separate chapters are devoted to System Messaging, Administration, Transactional Messaging, Triggers, and MSMQ 3.0 including the HTTP protocol. Finally MSMQ on the Pocket PC is covered. I found the discussion of difficult topics, difficult to me anyway, such as MSMQ in a global MSDTC transaction in the Transaction chapter to be excellent. I don't think you will be disappointed in the book.

MSMQ is now in its third version and is shown here to be very stable and useful for distributed, asynchronous programming on Microsoft platforms. Those of you also familiar with the Java world will recognise MSMQ as the analog of Java Message Service. (Though this book's index contains no entries for Java or JMS.)

The description of MSMQ 3 is comprehensive. The authors show how it has significant improvements over version 2. They point out that the main difference is now you have Internet Messaging. You can send and get messages via http, and refer to q queue by its URL. Very nice. An indication of how the rise of the Internet shapes our programming expectations.

The book is replete with example code. In C#, naturally. But even if you don't know this language, it has good semantic keywords, so that following the logic is easy. The book is also a testament to how Microsoft is promoting C# as their core language for development. Quite reasonable, as the language has been well designed. In fact, you might regard this entire book as an important use case for C#!

This books does have some working examples.
I felt that the book lacked in the clarity in how to setup
the msmq for routing which is extremly important for enterprise applications. Like alot of books, the start of the book was a very good introduction, then the author slacks off and misses out a few explanations here and there and the examples in the later chapters then don't work. Would have been nice if the author provided some examples to demonstrate msmq problem architectures. Very messy in the end.

Maybe it is just my copy of the book, but it looks so cheaply printed as to be distracting. It looks like a xerox copy of a bad run off from another printer. The text is sometimes so garbled it is hard to read.

On to the technical review...

The technical portion of this book is weak. Most of the material is the same as the MSDN help (very vague and nonhelpful).

In particular I HATE it when books give you a ton of examples and they are all the exact same as the MSDN ones (and wrong to boot). For me the overall review of the technology was ok, but the implementation is very weak. Most of the book assumes you are running in an Active Directory environment and I am not. And almost all of the examples in the book are localhost type of examples. Who is going to bother will all of this for an app that runs on one machine?

This is a very competent and well written walkthrough of MSMQ functionality. The book is fairly simple in form. The first chapter is an introductory level discussion of message queueing with effective illustrations. The second chapter covers the .NET API for messaging with C#. The third chapter covers administration of the message queue. These three chapters are really the heart of the book. The final chapters cover advanced topics like transactions and triggers. MSMQ 3.0 is also covered.

The book is well written and makes good use of graphics to explain concepts like message flow and state management. A very good, very tight book.

While this book is rated as user level of intermediate to advanced, it explains thoroughly from the basics of the MS Message Queuing technology to its advanced features that anyone who wants to learn would benefit from it. I'm mostly impressed with Mr.Tejaswi Redkar who is one of the authors of this book. When I e-mailed him questions regarding some of the examples in the book, he provided answers in a timely manner (even during the weekend). I do appreciate his professionalism.

Very good introduction for MSMQ, explains all features. The examples are good but you need polish them, I recommend it.

If you are programming in .net, especially in C#, than this is a great book to have.

It is direct to the point, has a great overview on how to create and read queues, gets into large scaled environments and set up, and overall it is easy to read. Definitely a must have for someone that wants to get going right away.

I have not read the entire book, but I was able to get all my answers quick, and found them to be very thorough.
I know I'm not the type that wants to read everything there is BEFORE I get started with it.