[JDEV] Developing a Jabber-Based application (Newbie guidance)

[Ronald Gainey]

I apologize in advance if I haven't found the appropriate forum or if my questions are all answered in some great doc(s) somewhere, I have spent some time reading doc, but I am still finding my way around.

I'm interested in developing an online interactive game, and I believe Jabber may provide a good platform for my project.  The game is of turn-taking, board game style, and Jabber's presence, IM, and chat facilities seem to be a great fit, as well as, of course, the underlying messaging platform for my application-specific messaging.

I was hoping to leverage some of the existing application code base and avoid reinventing the wheel, where possible.  My background is pretty solid in C++, and I am just starting to seriously learn Java.  Is JabberBeans the current state-of-the-art as far as a Java API for Jabber?  I first looked at this a while back, and encountered a number of references to the JECI, but that seems to be either dead or to have evolved into JabberBeans, is that close to accurate?

On the client side, I am leaning towards an applet.  I had hoped to perhaps use the JabberApplet as a base from which to begin coding, but when I go to the SourceForge project for the applet, I get a 404 for the source download page, is this code still available?  If not, are there any other open source Java clients I might re-use or learn from?  Or do I just need to start from scratch with the well-written "Jabber Client Developer's Cheat Sheet" by Jens Alfke?

On the server side, I believe that my server component would be, from the Jabber architecture world-view, just another client.  That is, if I understand correctly, the Jabber protocol should allow me to pass around my application-specific messages without any particular exentions to the core Jabber messaging protocol.  So from my application perspective I'd have distinct client/server components, but to Jabber these pieces would both be peers to each other and client entities to Jabber.  Do I understand this correctly?

Would Jabberoo be the C++ equivalent to JabberBeans?  Is either of these more mature, robust, or full-featured?  How about Net::Jabber?  DJ Adams "Fun With Jabber" is also a nice tutorial, but I don't know if the quickest route for me is to learn perl, get up to speed with Java, or stick with C++.  I have been leaning towards Java on the server, since I'm pretty sure I want to use it for the client anyway.

Many questions, I know, even a few answers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
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