Modern microsoft message service: MSMQ, SQL Service Broker?

Question

I'm looking for a message service that is similar to Amazon AQS, but in the Microsoft stack and on premise.

I've looked in to MSMQ, but I'm worried it's outdated. All of the questions here (about MSMQ) are from 2010 or earlier.

I've also looked into SQL Broker Service, but it seems like it needs an implementation on both sides of communication (one for each system), and it's overly complex for what I need.

So I guess the real question is: Is MSMQ still considered a modern and effective platform for messaging?

Answer 1

MSMQ is, IMHO, pretty horrible, it's a generation old now and is based around COM which is tricky to administer and a nightmare to troubleshoot. I would avoid it if I were you. However WCF provides a netMsmqBinding that uses MSMQ to provide messaging semantics so this is probably worth a look. (I haven't used it but it looks like it abstracts away the pain of COM).

Service Broker is actually really good and quite simple, but is only really appropriate if at least one of the ends of your communication is a SQL Server database; you can use it as a pure transport mechanism but then you're adding a dependency that probably isn't worth it.

Other alternatives for on-premise solutions; you could look at using Windows Workflow, or see if there are any messaging services being built on top of Server App Fabric.