[JDEV] Looking for transport development guidance

[Mark Hahn]

I am looking for the recipe, if you will, for transport development. 
I have several third party information providers that I would like to 
integrate with jabber or at least experiment with the integration. 
Things like the weather service that someone is already working on 
would be an example of a third party information service. The 
information providers may support pull access where a client requests 
information and the provider delivers the information in response or 
the provider pushes information independent of a request or some 
combination of the two. Initially I am interested in using IM clients 
and a textual interface for accessing the services.

I have been reading whatever documentation I can find about the 
Jabber 1.2 system as well as looking at the code. I would really 
appreciate some high level guidance about the types of pieces and 
parts I would need to develop. For example, I can imagine needing a 
transport server for each information service or quite possibly one 
that handles all of them. One side of the transport server speaks the 
third party information service protocol, the other jabber protocol. 
How are transports integrated into jabber?  Is their a transport 
specific module component that handles the pieces of jabber protocol 
destined for the information service provider and then hands those 
off to the transport?  How does a client discover which services are 
available in order for that client to be able to subscribe to that 
service (i.e. have the service appear in my roster as someone I can 
interact with)? Is there a discovery mechanism or do you just need to 
know the "address" of the destination and it just happens to be a 
service provider? Does one treat services just like any other user 
that you want to add to your roster?

It sure looks like all the infrastructure is in place (or at least 
appears to be given my untrained jabber eyes) and that what I really 
need is just some guidance. The details of any given piece can be 
learned, for now I want to get a handle on the large chunks, their 
roles and responsibilities.

thanks

-mark
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  Mark Hahn              |  Verizon Laboratories
  mark.hahn at verizon.com  |  40 Sylvan Road
                         |  Waltham, Ma. 02451
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