Last year at PDC 2010, the Azure AppFabric team made a number of important announcements. One of the improvements they released was a significantly enhanced version of the Azure AppFabric Service Bus Message Buffers feature.![[windows_azure[3].jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij1D53S3Mh9i1-F2h_jwzZQroWya9vEvowA-dbYzUX-IYQt_6Xi8GP39uqPJyLh23c_I5ZcRkXQ_OWTBFXMtrFdjRMjH02oX7wgxtrJ2lRkOiPX53VgwmaUwhvOiQ0KeTg8zu6gjnB4hOp/s1600/windows_azure%5B3%5D.jpg)
What’s the difference between the current Message Buffers and the new Durable Message Buffers?
The current version of Message Buffers provide a small in-memory store inside the Azure Service Bus where up to 50 messages no larger than 64KB can be stored for up to ten minutes. Each message can be retrieved by a single receiver. This makes the range of scenario’s where this is useful somewhat limited. The new version of Message Buffers enhance this feature so it could have a much wider appeal. Message Buffers are now durable and look much more like a queuing system. This makes it possible to start using Durable Message Buffers as an alternative to the Azure Queues.