Visual Basic Concepts

Visual Basic and the Microsoft Message Queue

Visual Basic makes it easy to build solutions that utilize the Microsoft Message Queue.

The Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) offers a fault-tolerant and easy-to-use way to move information around an enterprise network. MSMQ is available as part of the Windows Option Pack (see http://backoffice.microsoft.com/) and includes the "Microsoft Message Queue Object Library." Once installed, this library can be referenced in Visual Basic via the "References" dialog (available from the Project menu) to provide users access to MSMQ’s object library.

MSMQ allows programmers to create application message queues and pass user-defined messages between them. These messages can also be made part of Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) transactions, making their delivery contingent on the success of a transaction. This offers many possibilities to easily create transactional systems.

Sample Application: Message Queue

A suite of samples (Message Queue) demonstrating simple use of MSMQ by Visual Basic are included with Visual Basic 6.0. These sample use Visual Basic Property Bags persisted as text to pass information between applications. For information about the location of Visual Basic sample applications, see Visual Basic Samples