[JDEV] From one to many - or Real time data transport?

[Peter Antman]

Hi,
I recently discovered Jabber (through Linux Journal) and finds it very
interesting. I am currently trying to understand its architecture. My first
reaction was, aha - an open source XML based Message-oriented middleware 
(MOM) product. Then I started reading the documentation and realized it was
Instant Messaging product with the ability to send messages from one node 
(entity) to another - Point-to-Point in MOM lingo (PtP)-, and to subscribe 
to another user/entity's presence - Publish/Subscribe (Pub/Sub) in MOM lingo.
And this is fine, and Jabber is really making its way in this category of 
software. 

Then I started reading the Jabber Internet-Draft. And in the connectionmap in 
section 2 one finds something different, namely a transport meant to provide
"real time data to Jabber, such as log notification". It's a part of 9.1 too:
"Any server-side entity can easily participate in the real-time generation 
and delivery of XML".

This is interesting, and sort of makes Jabber look a little more like a MOM 
again.

The problem is this: I can not find any documentation in the protocols for 
such a feature, if you do not interpretate the quotes above in a naive way.

My interpretation is this (it might be naive too ;-)): There is some though 
that it should be possible to have a real time feed of data of some sort and 
that users/clients should be able to get this data send to them as messages.

If this is true, it would mean that Jabber would have to have support for 
Publish and Subscribe for a specific types of messages (topic in MOM lingo), 
and it would start to look like a MOM again.

Why do the quotes imply that? Because the only other way I can see it is that 
the publishing source (the live data feed) would have to know the identity of 
every one interested in getting the message - and if I understand the protocol
correct, such a real time event notifier would have to send each individual a 
separate message. Much like you do in a mailing program by defining a private 
group to send to (which mean that if more than one publishing party should be 
able to participate in the feed, rosters must be distributed between all 
sending parties).

The logic of the presence mechanism - but applied to messages, would be a 
more well designed solution to this feature; sort of like a mailing list 
functionality in Jabber (with both half and full duplex). 

Is this being thought about, is there any plans to implement such 
functionality, or is it there already, without me being able to find it? Is 
it possible to interpret and use the groupchat functionality for this?

//Peter