[jdev] Re: Roster caching

[Remko Troncon]

On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 03:33:03PM -0600, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> objections to it. I'm not sure how much demand there really is for this
> feature, but server and client developers could experiment and see if it
> makes life much better for all concerned. :-)

Well, i must confess that each time i log in with my 'main' jabber
account and MSN account with XML logging on, i always shiver about
the size of my contactlist(s) being sent. When logging in over a
cell phone connection, i lose a lot of initial traffic (11k uncompressed)
just retrieving my roster. This is why i created a special account with
my most important contact, to use in bandwidth-challenged situations.
I realize stream compression would help me a lot, but such an optimization
sounds like a good way to avoid traffic altogether.

I like the direction of Dave's proposal. However, at first i read it as 
'keeping one number for the total roster', kind of like how subversion manages
repositories. This makes adding, deleting, ... and such easy, and doesn't
require the other operations (like obtaining a list of deletions,
obtaining a list of entries). However, this requires more (smart) storage 
i guess. The one number per entry works, but it makes deletions pretty 
tricky to implement and track, both server and client side, and sounds like 
you can get into a mess pretty fast.

cheers,
Remko