Is there a scalable alternative to SQL Server Query Notifications for raising events in an application from SQL Server?

SQL Server Query Notifications is a great tool, but it doesn't seem built to scale very well. Every application that wants/needs notifications has to keep an op开发者_如何学Cen connection to the database for the duration of the time it wants notifications (typically the entire time the application is running).

I am open to creative solutions. Off the top of my head I just thought of putting a service on the server that would subscribe to SQL Server Query Notifications which could then notify the client applications. In this case you have only 1 database connection open (and why not just leave it open all the time), and then your client applications could just subscribe to the service for notification.

Ideas??

---

You may want to look into building your own solution using SQL Server Service Broker and db_mail or external activators.