Is this a good/preferable pattern to Azure Queue construction for a T4 template?

Question

I'm building a T4 template that will help people construct Azure queues in a consistent and simple manner. I'd like to make this self-documenting, and somewhat consistent.

1. First I made the queue name at the top of the file, the queue names have to be in lowercase so I added ToLower()

2. The public constructor uses the built-in StorageClient API's to access the connection strings. I've seen many different approaches to this, and would like to get something that works in almost all situations. (ideas? do share)

3. I dislike the unneeded HTTP requests to check if the queues have been created so I made is a static bool . I didn't implement a Lock(monitorObject) since I don't think one is needed.

4. Instead of using a string and parsing it with commas (like most MSDN documentation) I'm serializing the object when passing it into the queue.

5. For further optimization I'm using a JSON serializer extension method to get the most out of the 8k limit. Not sure if an encoding will help optimize this any more

6. Added retry logic to handle certain scenarios that occur with the queue (see html link)

7. Q: Is "DataContext" appropriate name for this class?

8. Q: Is it a poor practice to name the Queue Action Name in the manner I have done?

What additional changes do you think I should make?

public class AgentQueueDataContext
{
    // Queue names must always be in lowercase
    // Is named like a const, but isn't one because .ToLower won't compile...
    static string AGENT_QUEUE_ACTION_NAME = "AgentQueueActions".ToLower();

  static bool QueuesWereCreated { get; set; }

    DataModel.SecretDataSource secDataSource = null;

    CloudStorageAccount cloudStorageAccount = null;
    CloudQueueClient cloudQueueClient = null;
    CloudQueue queueAgentQueueActions = null;

    static AgentQueueDataContext()
    {
        QueuesWereCreated = false;
    }

    public AgentQueueDataContext() : this(false)
    {
    }
    public AgentQueueDataContext(bool CreateQueues)
    {
        // This pattern of setting up queues is from:
        // ttp://convective.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/queues-azure-storage-client-v1-0/
        //
        this.cloudStorageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("DataConnectionString");
        this.cloudQueueClient = cloudStorageAccount.CreateCloudQueueClient();
        this.secDataSource = new DataModel.SecretDataSource();

        queueAgentQueueActions = cloudQueueClient.GetQueueReference(AGENT_QUEUE_ACTION_NAME);

        if (QueuesWereCreated == false || CreateQueues)
        {
            queueAgentQueueActions.CreateIfNotExist();
            QueuesWereCreated = true;
        }
    }

  // This is the method that will be spawned using ThreadStart
   public void CheckQueue()
    {
        while (true)
        {
            try
            {
                CloudQueueMessage msg = queueAgentQueueActions.GetMessage();

                bool DoRetryDelayLogic = false;

                if (msg != null)
                {
                    // Deserialize using JSON (allows more data to be stored)
                    AgentQueueEntry actionableMessage = msg.AsString.FromJSONString<AgentQueueEntry>();

                    switch (actionableMessage.ActionType)
                    {
                        case AgentQueueActionEnum.EnrollNew:
                            {
                                // Add to 
                                break;
                            }
                        case AgentQueueActionEnum.LinkToSite:
                            {
                                // Link within Agent itself

                                // Link within Site

                                break;
                            }
                        case AgentQueueActionEnum.DisableKey:
                            {
                                // Disable key in site

                                // Disable key in AgentTable (update modification time)

                                break;
                            }
                        default:
                            {
                                break;
                            }
                    }

                    //
                    // Only delete the message if the requested agent has been missing for 
                    // at least 10 minutes
                    //
                    if (DoRetryDelayLogic)
                    {
                        if (msg.InsertionTime != null)
                            if (msg.InsertionTime < DateTime.UtcNow + new TimeSpan(0, 10, 10))
                                continue;

                        // ToDo: Log error: AgentID xxx has not been found in table for xxx minutes.   
                        //                  It is likely the result of a the registratoin host crashing.
                        //                  Data is still consistent.  Deleting queued message.
                    }


                    //
                    // If execution made it to this point, then we are either fully processed, or 
                    // there is sufficent reason to discard the message.
                    //
                    try
                    {
                        queueAgentQueueActions.DeleteMessage(msg);
                    }
                    catch (StorageClientException ex)
                    {
                        // As of July 2010, this is the best way to detect this class of exception
                        // Description: ttp://blog.smarx.com/posts/deleting-windows-azure-queue-messages-handling-exceptions
                        if (ex.ExtendedErrorInformation.ErrorCode == "MessageNotFound")
                        {
                            // pop receipt must be invalid
                            // ignore or log (so we can tune the visibility timeout)
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            // not the error we were expecting
                            throw;
                        }
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                   // allow control to fall to the bottom, where the sleep timer is...
                }
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                // Justification: Thread must not fail.
                //Todo: Log this exception

                // allow control to fall to the bottom, where the sleep timer is...
                // Rationale: not doing so may cause queue thrashing on a specific corrupt entry
            }

            // todo: Thread.Sleep() is bad
            //       Replace with something better...
            Thread.Sleep(9000);
        }

Answer 1

Q: Is "DataContext" appropriate name for this class?

In .NET we have a lot of DataContext classes, so in the sense that you want names to appropriately communicate what the class does, I think XyzQueueDataContext properly communicates what the class does - although you can't query from it.

If you want to stay more aligned to accepted pattern languages, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture calls any class that encapsulates access to an external system for a Gateway, while more specifically you may want to use the term Channel in the language of Enterprise Integration Patterns - that's what I would do.

Q: Is it a poor practice to name the Queue Action Name in the manner I have done?

Well, it certainly tightly couples the queue name to the class. This means that if you later decide that you want to decouple those, you can't.

As a general comment I think this class might benefit from trying to do less. Using the queue is not the same thing as managing it, so instead of having all of that queue management code there, I'd suggest injecting a CloudQueue into the instance. Here's how I implement my AzureChannel constructor:

private readonly CloudQueue queue;

public AzureChannel(CloudQueue queue)
{
    if (queue == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("queue");
    }

    this.queue = queue;
}

This better fits the Single Responsibility Principle and you can now implement queue management in its own (reusable) class.