Learning Azure, Day 2 | Servicebus

This is a continuation of my completely random learning experiences while trying to learn the Azure plattform.

Future messages

When you send a message on the Azure Servicebus, you have the option to set a ScheduledEnqueueTimeUtc property.
This value decides when the message will be visible to the receivers, it is kind of like sending a message in the future.

So when is this useful?

Let’s say we want to send a payment reminder 20 days after an order was placed, but only if no payments have arrived.
We could solve this using future messages.

Consider the following flow of messages

Receive PlaceOrder message -> Send Reminder (set ScheduledEnqueueTimeUtc to 20 days in the future)

..20 days pass

Receive Reminder message -> Check if the order have been paied, if not, send the reminder to the buyer using snailmail or email

This way, you don’t have to build additional scheduling logic to your system or add polling tables to your database, it is handled by the Servicebus itself.

Looks super useful, I have to look into how this scales, if messages can be kept for years without side effects.

That’s all for now