SQL Server 2008 / VB2008

I'm building a fairly simple VB2008 application which consists of two parts. An 'Updater', where the user changes the state of certain fields in certain tables and a 'Monitor' which is displaying a Red, Amber or Green icon depending upon the state of the fields in question. The 'Updater' and 'Monitor' are running on different PCs within the LAN and there may be more than one 'Monitor' running at any given time. (there will only ever be 1 'Updater')

I'm looking for the 'best' method to implement for the updating of the 'Monitor(s)' in real-time. I had considered a TCP/IP connection but that seems a little heavy handed. Is there something inherent in SQL Server 2008 (R2) / VB2008 that could be used?

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

As I understand, you need to push the data to these monitors when the updater has updated records.

Perhaps this article is for you.

Thanks for the link. I've had a look and it seems that it's describing how to 'synchronise' databases, it would still require the monitor to 'poll' something to look for a change, rather than being automatically updated via an asynchronous operation.

I'm reasonably comfortable with TCPClient and TCPServer so I think I'll go along that route and just notify the monitor(s) that something has changed when the application updates the fields in question.

I was just hoping that there was 'some magic' solution built in to something somewhere. :) At the moment I've got some more fundamental problems :)

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Originally Posted by Doogle

Thanks for the link. I've had a look and it seems that it's describing how to 'synchronise' databases, it would still require the monitor to 'poll' something to look for a change, rather than being automatically updated via an asynchronous operation.

I'm reasonably comfortable with TCPClient and TCPServer so I think I'll go along that route and just notify the monitor(s) that something has changed when the application updates the fields in question.

I was just hoping that there was 'some magic' solution built in to something somewhere. :) At the moment I've got some more fundamental problems :)

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I would suggest an easy way out would be to run an application service on one computer. Then have each monitor query the application service at a fixed interval. The application service would read the database at a fixed interval. This will give you the same result, but it would mean, you would have to pull the data each time instead of pushing it from Sql Server.