Service Broker External Activator not functioning

Question

Hi,

I have created an Audit.exe application. This application will poll the data from a table in DatabaseA to another table in DatabaseB. Audit.exe runs successfully on a ServerC.

Now I install the Service Broker External Activator on ServerC. I have everything configured correctly for this windows service to activate the Audit.exe. There is no error return from the log but standard information message. Too bad no data is polling. Any idea what should be missing?

Thanks,

Kenny

Answer 1

Hello Kenny,

The External Activator will be activated when a message is send in the message queue; are there unhandled messages in the queue?

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Olaf Helper

Blog Xing

Answer 2

Yes. there is message in the queue. The Audiit.exe has no problem to pick up the message. Just wondering why External Activator is not able to do so.

Answer 3

You might consider turning on verbose logging for troubleshooting.  Change the config file (C:\Program Files\Service Broker\External Activator\Config\EAService.config) to specify the following:

<LogSettings>
 <LogFilter>
  <TraceFlag>All Levels</TraceFlag>
  <TraceFlag>All Modules</TraceFlag>
  <TraceFlag>All Entities</TraceFlag>
  <TraceFlag>Verbose</TraceFlag>
 </LogFilter>
</LogSettings>

See http://www.dbdelta.com/service-broker-external-activator-example for a full example.

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Dan Guzman, SQL Server MVP, http://www.dbdelta.com

Answer 4

I don't see any error messages from the EAService log.

I try to write custom log in the Audit.exe but nothing is written out to my custom log file. I guess something is wrong when we use

-- External Activation Event
CREATE EVENT NOTIFICATION AUDIT_EVENT
 ON QUEUE AUDIT_MESSAGES -- When messages arrive in this Queue, the Event will be raised
 FOR QUEUE_ACTIVATION    -- The type of Event
 TO SERVICE 'EXTERNAL_ACTIVATION_SERVICE' , 'E836F849-DF5E-4A57-A85B-E40B34CEB430'
 --TO SERVICE 'EXTERNAL_ACTIVATION_SERVICE' , 'current database'
GO

The 'current database' is working fine but if using 'broker_instance_specifier', windows service doesn't trigger the Audit.exe.

1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM ====== ================================================================================
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM ====== ================================================================================
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM INFO The External Activator service is starting.
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM INFO Initializing configuration manager ...
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM INFO Reloading configuration file C:\Program Files\Service Broker\External Activator\config\EAService.config ...
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM INFO Reloading configuration file completed
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM VERBOSE Running recovery using recovery log file C:\Program Files\Service Broker\External Activator\log\EARecovery.rlog ...
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM VERBOSE Running recovery completed
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM INFO Initializing configuration manager completed
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM VERBOSE Starting worker threads...
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM VERBOSE Worker threads are successfully started.
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM VERBOSE CM-NS-Thread is starting...
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM INFO The External Activator service is running.
1/15/2013 11:21:12 PM VERBOSE Heartbeat-Thread is starting...

Answer 5

It is working now after I corrected the permission.

Answer 6

Hi Kenny,

Glad to hear the problem is resolved.

Could you please provide the detail solutions since other people could meet the same problem in the feature?

Thanks for your time!

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Iric Wen
TechNet Community Support