[JDEV] ICQ and AIM

[jswink at softcom.net]

Jeff McBride wrote:
> 
> Ok, something has kind of occurred to me that I just took for granted at
> first...
> 
> I don't understand at all how you plan on being able to communicate back
> and forth with ICQ and AIM people. Unless, you are saying that in order to
> do that, jabber users must also have ICQ and AIM IDs....

Essentially they do.  But the transport should do it without their
intervention.

Here's my take on an ICQ transport.

Suppose a jabber user adds 3 or 4 ICQ users to their roster.  The
jabber transport has to have a unique ICQ UIN to handle that.  The
ICQ server, sufficiently convinced that the jabber ICQ transport
is a client, will send online status info, messages etc. to the
transport, who, associating this UIN with a jabber user on that
server, will forward them to the jabber server etc.


 Jabber    Jabber    Jabber   ICQ                    ICQ
 users   transport   server   transport             server

 +-----+  +------+  +-----+  +-----------------+  +--------+
 | Joe |--|      |  |     |  | ICQ     Joe=789 |--|        |--123
 +-----+  |      |  |     |  |                 |  |        |
          |      |--|     |--|                 |  |        |--234
 +-----+  |      |  |     |  |                 |  |        |
 | Bob |--|      |  |     |  |         Bob=790 |--|        |--345
 +-----+  |      |  |     |  |                 |  |        |
          |      |  |     |  |                 |  |        |--456
 +-----+  |      |  |     |  |                 |  |        |
 | Jim |--|      |  |     |  |                 |  |        |--567
 +-----+  +------+  +-----+  +-----------------+  +--------+
          

Joe and Bob have a few ICQ users in their Jabber rosters.
The ICQ transport has to have an ICQ UIN for each of them to
properly route info to and from the ICQ server.

This allows for two-way communication, essentially transparent
to users.  Granted the ICQ transport is a wee bit complex,
being required to establish a new ICQ account when Jim
decides to add ICQ user 456 to his roster.  It has to have
its own data files, though if it's done well, it need not
seem different from any other transport, as far as the
Jabber server is concerned.

Joshua Swink
jswink at softcom.net