Author: Paolo Salvatori (@babosbird) Contributor: Sean Feldman (@sfeldman) and more
The Service Bus Explorer allows users to connect to a Service Bus namespace and efficiently administer messaging entities. The tool provides advanced features like import/export functionality or the ability to test topic, queues, subscriptions, relay services, notification hubs and events hubs.
Using Chocolatey
chocolatey install ServiceBusExplorer
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/paolosalvatori/ServiceBusExplorer/releases/latest | grep browser_download_url | cut -d '"' -f 4
Microsoft Azure Service Bus is a reliable information delivery service. The purpose of this service is to make communication easier. When two or more parties want to exchange information, they need a communication facilitator. Service Bus is a brokered, or third-party communication mechanism. This is similar to a postal service in the physical world. Postal services make it very easy to send different kinds of letters and packages with a variety of delivery guarantees, anywhere in the world.
Similar to the postal service delivering letters, Service Bus is flexible information delivery from both the sender and the recipient. The messaging service ensures that the information is delivered even if the two parties are never both online at the same time, or if they aren't available at the exact same time. In this way, messaging is similar to sending a letter, while non-brokered communication is similar to placing a phone call (or how a phone call used to be - before call waiting and caller ID, which are much more like brokered messaging).
The message sender can also require a variety of delivery characteristics including transactions, duplicate detection, time-based expiration, and batching. These patterns have postal analogies as well: repeat delivery, required signature, address change, or recall.
Service Bus supports two distinct messaging patterns: Azure Relay and Service Bus Messaging.
For more information, feel free to read the official documentation here.
The Service Bus Explorer 2.1.0 can be used with the Service Bus for Windows Server 1.1. The Service Bus Explorer 2.1.0 uses a version of the Microsoft.ServiceBus.dll client library which is compatible with the Service Bus for Windows Server 1.1 RTM version. You can download the source code of the Service Bus Explorer 2.1.0 here.
Here you can find the tool documentation and a log of the features implemented over time.
The source code of the tool is now availale on GitHub as a public project. Now you have the opportunity to contribute to the evolution of the tool!
.For more information on how to use the Service Bus Explorer, see the following videos on Channel9:
- Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 3: Service Bus Explorer by Clemens Vasters
- Cross Platform Notifications using Windows Azure Notifications Hub by Elio Damaggio, Nick Harris and Chris Risner.
Service Bus Explorer is only on of the management tools available for Azure Service Bus.
Here are a couple of alternatives:
- Microsoft Azure Management Portal (SaaS, web based, extremely basic)
- ServiceBus360 (paid with free trial, SaaS, web based)
- PowerShell (Documentation)
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