Architecture that displays messages (like downtime) in application

I'm thinking of a architectural way of displaying messages in our application (Flex-Asp.NET-SqlServer), mostly messages that announce for instance a downtime.

Currently I was thinking of creating a table FlexMessage that holds the name of a message (based on that name I now where to put in Flex) and the value (the message itself). As a result however, someone will have to create these messages and also delete them when they are no longer valid. 开发者_如何学CSo, thinking further, I thought of creating messages having a startdate and enddate, so an interval in which they need to be displayed. Like this, someone could login to the management part and create a message that needs to be displayed from a certain date until a certain date.

I could also hardcode it in the Flex Application, but that would mean putting a new build online (of the swf) each time something changes with a certain message. No good idea I guess.

Is there a better way for this that I haven't thought about?

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One way to do this is to place your messages in an RSS feed, then read that feed from the Flex application.

There is an example of how to do this here: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=23819