alternative to polling database?

Question

I have an application that works as follows: Linux machines generate 28 different types of letter to customers. The letters must be sent in .docx (Microsoft Word format). A secr

Answer 1

Is there a zero or near zero config/maintenance piece of software that would achieve this? What are the options?

Possibly, but what you would save in configuration and implementation time would likely hurt performance more than your polling service ever could. SQL Server isn't made to do a push really (not easily anyway). There are things that you could use to push data out (replication service, log shipping - icky stuff), but they would be more complex and require more resources than your simple polling service. Some options would be:

1. some kind of trigger which runs your executable using command-line calls (sp_cmdshell)

2. using a COM object which SQL Server could open and run

3. using a SQL Agent job to run a VBScript (which would again be considered "polling")

These options are a bit ridiculous considering what you have already done is much simpler.

If you are worried about the polling service using too many cycles or something - you can always throttle it back - polling every minute, every 10 minutes, or even just once a day might be more appropriate - this would be a business decision, so go ask someone in the business how fast it needs to be.

Simple polling services are fairly common, because they are, well... simple. In addition they are also low overhead, remotely stable, and error-tolerant. The down side is that they can hammer the database into dust if not carefully controlled.