[JDEV] New Transport Architecture - Idea

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Hi Mark,

As I see it, this is really the thought behind RSS, which provides a mechanism
for creating syndicated content on the net. All Jabber needs to do is tap into
the millions of RSS files out there, which we used to do with Ryan Eatmon's
RSS-Agent and which we will do again once he's finished his Meerkat-Transport.

But perhaps I'm missing something?

Peter

Mark Zamoyta wrote:

> Jabber Transports are great things, but I'm sure you'll agree they're
> extremely difficult to build, debug, and release in a stable version.  Even
> then, the transport must be installed on each Jabber server desiring to use
> it.
>
> I'm thinking :  Jabber needs to leverage the work of the hundreds of
> thousands of web programmers and script writers.   Perhaps a Web Server
> Transport could be written that will take advantage of the millions of
> existing web sites and PHP / ASP / JSP / CGI programmers.
>
> For example, lets say a sports fan wants to receive batter by batter updates
> during a baseball game.  His Jabber server would need a "Sports Update"
> transport.  But as we know, very few people have the technical ability to
> write such a transport.
>
> With some kind of Web Server Transport, Jabber would simply act as a gateway
> to a web server.  For example:
> 1)  The Jabber user would subscribe to espn.web.jabber.org.
> 2)  The Web Server Transport would send an HTML request to jabber.espn.com
> 3)  The Web Server Transport  would package the resulting HTML (or XML)
> into a Jabber XML message and pass it back to the user.
> 4)  The Web Server Transport would poll jabber.espn.com, or it would receive
> pushes from the web server, passing appropriate HTML along to subscribers.
>
> The main benefit of such a transport is that it would treat web sites as
> transports, leveraging the content of many web sites and programming ability
> of their authors.
>
> Another example would be:  Instead of writing a "Horoscope Transport", let
> the hundreds of Horoscope web sites out there create some simple web pages
> that can be called by the Jabber Web Server Transport.  Jabber users would
> subscribe to janes_horoscopes.web.jabber.org , which would spring into
> action when the user came on-line.  Or if janes_horoscopes gave too much
> HTML for their Jabber client to handle, they could subscribe to
> bobs_horoscopes, or any other Jabber-client-friendly web site.
>
> I think such a transport architecture would help Jabber grow real fast and
> offer lots of great features!!  Jabber's programming pool will increase by
> millions.
>
> I'm interested in your feedback, or any work done on such a transport.
> Thanks,
> Mark
>
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