[jdev] Re: Implementing searchable jabber profiles

[Trejkaz Xaoza]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 07:11, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> I lean toward using x:data as the wire protocol because (i) some Jabber
> clients already support it, (ii) it is generic (not limited to merely a
> vCard replacement, which is good for specialized communities such as
> dating and gaming services), and (iii) I don't really care what the
> backend data storage format is (database, RDF, or whatever).

Generic profiles are a really good idea.  This way, sites which do integrate 
with a forum can have profiles which exactly match the forum profiles.  There 
would then be little or no translation between the two, beyond the XML -> 
database -> XML translation which would need to be done regardless.

Search becomes more consistent too, since the search form can somewhat mirror 
the actual profile.

Extension might get more interesting though.  Supposing two independent 
servers wanted to add an extra field to the form.  In my case, it might be 
the "description" field, since it doesn't appear to be in the spec (yet?) and 
I always use this field on my real vCard.  Two servers picking the same name 
would be able to aggregate their databases.  I wonder if the confusion coming 
from two servers picking different names would even be important, or whether 
any aggregators would simply ignore the non-standard fields.

TX

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             Email: Trejkaz Xaoza <trejkaz at trypticon.org>
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