[JDEV] Jabber as COM/DCOM replacement for linux.

[tom berger]

great idea. only it's not COM/DCOM that should be replaced. let
us leave that to bonobo (actually, is someone already working
on a jabber bonobo control, to replace jabberCOM ? i'm interested)...

what i see, is a bottom-line tool for creating 'web' applications.

my experience with web applications showed me the need for a
simple asynchronous protocol. you see, all the big corp. are
trying and trying, and they just cant do. microsoft is doing
it the COM way, ibm tries to do it the 'geeky' way, and supports
linux and java, oracle and sybase, borland, all of them. they
try to give you the  r e a l   p o w e r   of html (they all
know very little about that, but they learn fast).

when i saw jabberzilla for the first time a few days ago, all
i could think about was that this is something that everyone
is waiting for since a long time. because on the web, you cannot
really work with flash, java, COM and their friends. you cant,
because you knoe that doesn't matter what you do, you always
end up with 90% protocol. the other 10% is browser bugs and some
content. fot those of you who do not browse the web (especially
the people that do not use a modern browser) : people have been
doing all kind of really bizarre things on the web, utilizing
very simple cgi scripts, some clever javascripting, some basic
html. all of this, for a simple thing. to run an asyncronous
query or two.

jabber is nothing like COM. it is simple. and jabber::middleware
should be targeting exactly this niche. the simple, low-tech
technology can really benefit from it, and, it doesn't take much
to get there.

simple things stick. this is why html became big enough for people
to try using for what it shouldn't be used. i'm sure that if
jabber::middleware will be as simple, you  w i l l  find it being
used as a replacement for corba one day :)

tom

>--- Original Message ---
>From: ogeorge at littledevil.com.au
>To: jdev at jabber.org
>Date: 3/10/01 3:57:48 AM
>

>
>The more I think about it the more I love the idea.
>
>It also highlights my least favourite part of jabber and offers
a better 
>solution.
>
>I think interfacing say the chat transport through iq/set should
not be an 
>obscure flat naming thing (insert flame here) but instead should
be an object 
>oriented interface to a series of functions.  What i'm trying
to say is that 
>the interface should be XML-RPC across the jabber network. 

>
>so notionally i might call functions on the chat transport by
sending an iq/set 
>(or perhaps an iq/xmlrpc) to a jid on the chat transport:
>  <iq type=set to='chatt.localhost/groupid'>
>    <query xmlns='chat'>
>      <method>join</method>
>      <args></args>
>    </query>
>  </iq>
>
>look at www.xml-rpc.com/spec if you are interested.
>
>Obviously this can be done already but it is the jabber way
to standardise... 
>has this train of though come up before?
>
>Quoting Oliver George <oliver at littledevil.com.au>:
>
>> 
>> Jabber as COM/DCOM replacement for linux.
>> --------------------------------------------
>> 
>> Think about it...
>> 
>> - you can access local/remote objects by a string identifier,
the
>>   transport JID
>> 
>> - you can define user/group privileges based on the sender
JID (perhaps
>>   mapped directly to unix user/group permissions)
>> 
>> - it has capacity for reference counting (presences)
>> 
>> - it has capacity for exceptions (responses of type="error")
>> 
>> - it has RPC functionality in the guise of IQ request/responses
>> 
>> - it allows language independent communication
>> 
>> - it would be really light/efficient where the packets are
just passed
>>   around by references to memory structures (and slower if
it is
>>   serialized in transit)
>> 
>> - Optional idea: it would even handle buffering messages where
the
>>   destination is not currently connected (bound to be useful
for
>> something?)
>> 
>> - Optional idea: you could use the XML-RPC type definitions
for language
>>   independent type passing.
>> 
>> I'd like to say at this point that a little knowledge is a
dangerous
>> thing and I'm definitely no expert. The idea seems really
interesting
>> though  :)
>> 
>> I'm curious as to anyone elses thoughts on the issue,
>> 
>> regards, Oliver.
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev
>> 
>
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