[JDEV] Jabber DevZone News - jer - Jabber Server 1.4 Released

[Jabber DevZone]

Jabber Server 1.4 Released

The sources can be found at
http://download.jabber.org/dists/1.4/final/ (binaries and packages
available in contrib).  Besides being our easiest release ever in
terms of installation and ongoing administration, the 1.4 server
contains a general round of bug fixes and stability enhancements,
making it the most stable Jabber server platform to date. The focus of
development has been on stabilizing the server architecture introduced
in 1.2, enabling all of the standard services (including transports)
to work smoothly, and adding many new features. The entire server team
has worked hard to ensure that the 1.4 release is an incredible IM
platform and a significant step forward in advancing Jabber as an open
XML architecture.  Because of the increased stability of the 1.4
server as well as the availability of improved transports and other
server add-ons to coincide with this release, now is a great time to
upgrade your old 1.0 or 1.2 server. To make this easier, we have been
putting more effort into documentation, and there is a new HOWTO for
the 1.4 server that is now available at http://docs.jabber.org/. In
addition, we've created a new mailing list especially for Jabber
server administrators, the sign-up page is located at
http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jadmin/.  The 1.4 server is
available in various formats for many platforms and has been built
successfully on a wide range of Linux and Unix platforms. If there is
not a package or binary available for your platform, it is very easy
to build from source and should work on almost every Unix platform.
There is also a 'make static' option available for platforms that do
not have the standard dynamic loading capabilities. In addition, a
combined and pre-configured package of all the transports and base
server should be available shortly.  Compatible versions of all of the
major transports/services are available with this release as separate
tarballs and are very easy to add to the base server (see the HOWTO
for details). While some of these are officially still in beta, the
quality of the transports has improved dramatically and release
candidate or final versions will be available in the coming weeks. The
components currently available are:   Conference (supports the 1.0
presence-based and 1.4 draft protocols)   Jabber Users Directory
(limited non-DB version for small servers only, the mysql and perl
based 'users-agent' is preferred for larger installations)   IRC (1.4
draft conferencing support only, will be available shortly)   AIM,
ICQ, MSN, Yahoo   The recent protocol enhancements supported at this
time (some client-side and some server-side) are listed at
http://docs.jabber.org/draft-proto/ and include:   authentication:
support for zero-knowledge authentication, for more secure login  
browsing: a friendly way for clients and users to access the list of
services available on a server or for a user   cryptography: support
for end-to-end encryption of messages and presence   message
expiration: allow a user to specify how long a message should be
stored offline before being deleted   message formatting: support for
XHTML-Basic to format messages   server dialback: a security mechanism
to prevent server spoofing   time-based queries: querying sevice
uptime, user last-login times, and client idle time   xml storage:
generic xml can be stored in any namespace under a user account
privately or made public so that anyone can access it   conferencing:
an extensible protocol for managing and accessing the list of
participants in a multi-party conference room  New administration
features in 1.4 include:   general server-wide announcement messages  
automatic welcome messages after registration   message of the day,
delivered only once after next login   administrators can browse to
view the list of online users   users can have certain groups in their
roster that are automatically managed and configured   As with 1.2,
extensibility is an important focus and continues to advance with this
version. The architecture is fundamentally a distributed xml-based
component architecture, so any piece can be replaced or distributed
across the network in any language and new components can be added
dynamically to the server similiarly to adding cgi scripts to a web
server. The session manager component also contains a module API
allowing server logic and user packet processing to be modified or
extended. The data access layer (XDB) is also abstraced allowing user
and server data to be stored in any data source; files (default), SQL
database, LDAP, etc. Socket management is also abstracted, allowing
socket handling to be implemented in a platform or performance
specific way (a new Linux-based scaling socket multiplexer project is
being started in conjunction with the Open Source Development Lab). 
Taking a peek into the future, the server team is going to be focusing
on the 1.4.X series for some time. This release is the first stable
platform that we are all excited about and plan on building on top of.
Look for upcoming point releases that enhance stability, performance,
and farming-based configurations. The server team and other members of
the Jabber community are already working on many new components that
will transparently extend the Jabber platform even further, such as
http (web based clients, SOAP), email/SMTP, VoIP (SIP), whiteboarding
(SXPM and SVG), calendaring, and many more.  The 1.4 server gives us a
solid, long-lasting platform for instant messaging as well as for
developing of a variety of exciting new applications that make use of
Jabber to tap into information and connect people together. Your
feedback is welcome and we hope you'll join the conversation!