[JDEV] UIDs

[Jim Phillips]

I'm inclined to agree with the idea of using a URLesque UID scheme.  At
least when thinking in terms of what the most common application is likely
to be - "buddy lists", it's easy to visualize how it would work..  Most
users will have a list of friends/family showing who's online and who's not.
On a lot of the IM apps I've seen, the name displayed in the list is not
necessarily the same as what the users actual name is... For example, in my
ICQ friends list, my friend is listed as joeschmo, but when the message is
sent to him, it actually goes to the address of 1324235.  When applied to
Jabber, the buddy list could essentially do the same thing.. sending a
message to joeschmo would really send a message to ICQ://1324235 and sending
a message to joebloe would send a message to AIM://joebloe, where sending a
message to mikey might send to JABBER://mikey@jabber.myhost.com.  As I
recall, this is how e-mail was routed between transports back in the days
before everyone was using SMTP as well.. To send a message from AOL to
someone on the internet, you had to send it to SMTP:user at host.com.  So you
had to know the transport back then too.  Until everyone is using the
transport, I honestly don't see a good way of hiding the transport from the
user on any level deeper than just having aliases in the "buddy lists"..

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Robinson [mailto:scott at tranzoa.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 1999 3:06 PM
To: jdev at jabber.org
Subject: Re: [JDEV] UIDs


One good reason to encode transport information is the problem of address
domain conflicts and multiple transports.

Example: ICQ has the main ICQ network (we'll call it icq.com because I don't
know it's real address) however they've also released a "Workgroup"-esque
server package. If we have transports connecting to both places, or better
yet, a transport at a different server on my local Jabber network connected
to a different ICQ network I'd want a way to specify them. 12341234 at ICQ
should goto the main network. However, how should I specify the alternative
network? 12341234 at ROBHOME? Hold on, "robhome" is the name of a server here!
In fact, with the current naming structure we'd have to decide whether a
transport "name" had priority over a host name.

Proposed solution: icq://12341234, icq://icq.com/12341234, or even
icq://jabber.localdomain/icq.com/12341234 can be used to differenciate
between the UIDs. (which one we used depends on how we'll finally end up
implementing routing and how abstracted we want UIDs) icq://robhome/12341234
or icq://jabber.localdomain/robhome/12341234 should then transport to the
independent ICQ network "robhome".

Scott.

* Thomas D. Charron translated into ASCII [Tue, Aug 31, 1999 at 06:41:21AM
-0700][<FHMCEBNBJGPPDAAA at my-deja.com>]
> On Tue, 31 Aug 1999 04:40:33   Scott Robinson wrote:
> >I'd like a bit more clarification on UIDs. What is wrong with a URL/URI
> >based UID system?
> 
>   URL/URI is used to identify resources.  There is no reason why our
current user at domain system will not be able to HAVE a URL.  Just like FTP
can use:
> 
> ftp://anonymous@ftp.cdrom.com/
> 
>   Notice the simularity?
> 
> jabber://tcharron@jabber.org/
> 
>   Or, in the case of passing a password along:
> 
> jabber://tcharron:somepass@jabber.org
> 
>   URL is a way to present transport, etc information.  There is no reason
to use URL internal to the protocol, IMHO..
> ---
> Thomas Charron
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==--
> Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> jdev mailing list
> jdev at jabber.org
> http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev
> 

_______________________________________________
jdev mailing list
jdev at jabber.org
http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev