Microsoft Azure Development Cookbook Second Edition

Receiving messages with Storage queues

The CloudQueue class in the Azure Storage library provides both synchronous and asynchronous methods to retrieve messages from a queue. The GetMessage() method retrieves a message from a queue while the GetMessages() method retrieves up to 32 messages at a time. The GetMessages() method reduces the number of storage operations used to access a queue and can improve scalability of an Azure cloud service.

Messages retrieved in this way have a visibility timeout during which they cannot be retrieved by additional calls to the Azure Queue service. The maximum visibility timeout for a message is 7 days and the default is 30 seconds. This visibility timeout enhances the durability of a hosted service. If a consumer ...