Intermittent Failure Of Interdatabase Service With SP-1 CTP

In an SSB test project created from the T-SQL batch in Stuart Padley's Weblog (subtitled "SQL Server 2005 stuff I couldn't find anywhere else", http://blogs.msdn.com/stuartpa/archive/2005/07/25/443229.aspx) I found strange inconsistencies with enquing messages between two databases on the same SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition SP-1 CTP March instance running under Windows Server 2003 SE SP-1:

Sending a simple message from the Initiator to the Target database with either the SendMessageProc stored procedure or its code as a batch fails for about 50% of all tries, with varying failure patters (up to 10 sequential attempts fail). Messages for failed tries remained in the transmission_queue, but didn't appear in the InitiatorQueue or TargetQueue.

I made the following changes to Stuart's code in the SendMessageProc procedure and my SendInitiatorToTarget.sql messaging script:

1. Split out EXEC SendMessageProc from Stage 4 and all of Stage 5 into a separate batch to enable sending multiple messages without recreating all objects.
2. Changed BEGIN DIALOG to BEGIN DIALOG CONVERSATION
3. Added a missing END CONVERSATION statement

A simple intradatabase service based on the "Hello World" DB Engine sample run in the Northwind or AdventureWorks database behaves as expected.

The partition with SQLS 2005 SP-1 also has SSX SP-1 with Advanced Services installed. Some minor problems occured when installing SSX SP-1, so I removed the original SSX instance and reinstalled SSX SP-1. See http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/sql-server-2005-sp1-ctp-available-for.html.

The same SSMS project runs fine on a fresh install of SQLS 2005 RTM under WS 2003 SP-1 on another machine partition. (This machine isn't running VS.) No messages fail to reach the Target database, as would be expected.

Has anyone else encountered similar anomalous behavior with SSB under SP-1 CTP? This problem ran me nuts for an entire day until I finally gave up and created a new SQLS 2005 RTM test instance.

If anyone (especially Remus) wants a copy of the scrpt, send your e-mail address to roger_jennings(nospam_at)compuserve(nospam_dot)com.

--rj