Chapter 7. The SQL-NS Subscription Management API

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Overview of Subscription Management Interfaces

• Types of Subscription Management Interfaces

• The SQL-NS Subscription Management API

• Getting Set Up to Use the API

• Implementing the Logic Layer of a Subscription Management Application

• Building the User Interface

The primary way in which users interact with a SQL-NS application is through its Subscription Management Interface (SMI). The SMI is a custom program, developed as part of the application, that allows users to register themselves as subscribers and add, modify, and delete subscriptions. The form of the SMI varies by application: The SMI could be an ASP.NET web page, a Windows application, or a command-line program.

Whatever the nature of the interface, the SMI piece of a SQL-NS application is built using the SQL-NS Subscription Management API. This API consists of a set of classes that allow you to programmatically add, delete, and modify subscribers and subscriptions in a SQL-NS instance. When building an SMI, you focus mainly on building the user interface and business logic, and use the classes provided by SQL-NS to perform the actual data manipulations. This chapter takes a detailed look at the SQL-NS Subscription Management API and how to use it to build an SMI. Whereas the code samples in previous chapters primarily consisted of XML and T-SQL, in this chapter we'll be writing C# code in Visual Studio .NET.