Defination of Endpoints

An endpoint is the connecting point between two services in the communication architecture and is addressed by a protocol and an IP port number. We need to specify endpoint when setting up communication between two broker services.

There are three types of endpoints you can use in SQL Server 2005. They are:

Service Broker endpoint SQL Server uses Service Broker endpoints for Service Broker communication

outside the SQL Server instance. An endpoint is a SQL Server object that represents the capability for SQL Server to communicate over the network, so a Service Broker endpoint configures SQL Server to send and receive Service Broker messages over the network.

Service Broker endpoints provide options for transport security and message forwarding. A Service Broker endpoint listens on a specific TCP port number. By default, an instance of SQL Server does not contain a Service Broker endpoint. You must create a Service Broker endpoint to send or receive messages outside the SQL Server instance.

Mirror endpoints For database mirroring, a server instance requires its own, dedicated database-mirroring endpoint. Mirror endpoints are special-purpose endpoints used exclusively to receive database-mirroring connections from other server instances. The same as broker instance endpoints, database-mirroring endpoints use TCP to send and receive messages between the server instances in database-mirroring sessions. Each configured database mirror endpoint exclusively uses a TCP-specific port number.

HTTP endpoints SQL Server exposes native XML web services through the database engine by configuring and creating HTTP endpoints. To work enable native calls, SQL Server will request and register with the HTTP listener http.sys, which is available only on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Service Pack 2. This means SQL Server uses XML and HTTP to access services and objects regardless of the client software used.

SQL Server uses SOAP message requests to an instance of SQL Server over HTTP to provide

the following:

· Access to T-SQL batch statements, with or without parameters

· Access to stored procedures, extended stored procedures, and scalar-valued user-defined functions

The key point to remember is that SQL Server does not use Internet Information Services (IIS) but instead directly registers with http.sys. When setting up a web service that can listen natively for HTTP SOAP request, you have to configure this endpoint using the CREATE ENDPOINT statement.