[jdev] Re: Eclipse and XMPP/Jabber

[Peter Saint-Andre]

In article 
<F1AB070277387F429EF72E0D507C6FA427415A at ohm.ascad.insideasc.com>,
 "John Liston" <listonj at asconline.com> wrote:

> Scott, the project lead, has replied to me. He is now experimenting with the 
> Smack client and said he could use some assistance. Some excerpts from his 
> email:

Smack is actually a Java library for writing Jabber/XMPP clients, not a 
client itself. Another client to consider is Java Stream Objects (JSO), 
which supports the writing of clients, components, and servers:

http://jso.jabberstudio.org/

FWIW, my understanding is that there is heavy interest in JSO within Sun.

Smack and JSO seem to be the two most popular and actively maintained 
Java libs for Jabber/XMPP development.

> "With ecomm, we will be providing Eclipse-based abstract apis for access to 
> various kinds of communication functionality/protocols, and providing 
> 'reference implementations' of various protocols...for example, xmpp. This 
> should give us (and ecomm developers) the maximum flexibility to interoperate 
> with different existing and new protocols."

How do the Eclipse "reference implementations" relate to JSRs within the 
Java Community Process?

http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/overview

Naturally it would be good to get XMPP support into the "standard" 
libraries for most major programming languages (Java, Python, Perl, 
etc.), and the Eclipse effort might be a step in that direction.

> "As I understand it, [IETF/Jabber.org] are trying to define a consistent 
> protocol for IM server-side interoperability.

Well, XMPP is just streaming XML -- mainly used for IM, but also for 
many other applications, from network management to real-time gaming. 
XMPP is mostly implemented via a client-server architecture, but could 
be used peer-to-peer as well (cf. iChat in Rendezvous mode).

> I consider ecomm's effort to 
> be focused on delivering communications apis to Eclipse plugin developers 
> (primarily, but not only), so that applications can be easily constructed to 
> take advantage presence info, messaging, peer-to-peer communication, etc.  I 
> believe if approached in the right way, these can be complimentary...with 
> ecomm apis providing plugin developers with access to open communications 
> protocols (like XMPP), and allowing the rapid creation of Eclipse-based apps 
> that interoperate with other XMPP clients/devices."

Sounds good. :-)

/psa