3 ms·

XMPP is the future for cloud services

17 points by nreece 19y ago

Tichy 19y ago
Very interesting, although I think some other alternatives to polling are also emerging, like Pingback and Trackback for Blogs. XMPP might be more general, though.
iamwil 19y ago
Probably like everyone else, I found this great because it gave me a way to think about something familiar in a different way. I'm use to thinking about XMPP as just an IM and presence protocol, used by applications that let humans to communicate with other humans. But I didn't take it one step further and think of it as a messaging service between machines, mostly because I was under the impression that polling problem was solved (by the likes of Comet). By the same token, one should be able to run a "IMsite" over XMPP, analogous to a "web site" over HTTP. It's just that there currently is no "browser" for XMPP. If there were, you can technically send DOM updates or javascript (or whatever the browser can interpret) over XMPP. I imagine one should be able to take the mozilla engine and tack XMPP instead of HTTP in front (probably easier said than done). That way we should be able to build browser apps that need near-real-time updates. The obvious one is chat. In fact, most of our XMPP clients are specialized to do that. Other applications are collaboration software, like a shared whiteboard (if sending SVG over XMPP would not be a bandwidth hog). Video lectures with auto advancing slides might be another one. Fleet tracking might be another. MMORPGs would also be easier to write on such a platform. It'd be interesting to see where this goes, or if something better comes along.
- bct 19y ago
  > I imagine one should be able to take the mozilla engine and tack XMPP instead of HTTP in front (probably easier said than done). Already done: http://dev.hyperstruct.net/xmpp4moz http://dev.hyperstruct.net/xmpp4moz It's really cool, it's a pity it doesn't get more attention. There used to be a whiteboard demo on that site somewhere.
  - iamwil 19y ago
    Sweet. Thanks for the info. Goes to show you you're almost never the first to think of something.
1gor 19y ago
Well, I was intrigues first. But then I found [this](http://about.psyc.eu/Jabber http://about.psyc.eu/Jabber)... Which points out that >"I have been Jabber server administrator and a Jabber advocate for a few years and most complaints about Jabber I have heard was about its link-level inreliability"... > From a protocol and architectural point of view Jabber generates a lot more traffic than is necessary >It's not a question of religion - it's not true that one format is like another - there are clear and logical technical reasons why XML is plain wrong for this purpose. >XMPP isn't XML, really... Other than that - XMPP is cool, and we get to write servers in Erlang!

17 points by nreece 19y ago

Tichy 19y ago

Very interesting, although I think some other alternatives to polling are also emerging, like Pingback and Trackback for Blogs. XMPP might be more general, though.

iamwil 19y ago

Probably like everyone else, I found this great because it gave me a way to think about something familiar in a different way. I'm use to thinking about XMPP as just an IM and presence protocol, used by applications that let humans to communicate with other humans. But I didn't take it one step further and think of it as a messaging service between machines, mostly because I was under the impression that polling problem was solved (by the likes of Comet). By the same token, one should be able to run a "IMsite" over XMPP, analogous to a "web site" over HTTP. It's just that there currently is no "browser" for XMPP. If there were, you can technically send DOM updates or javascript (or whatever the browser can interpret) over XMPP. I imagine one should be able to take the mozilla engine and tack XMPP instead of HTTP in front (probably easier said than done). That way we should be able to build browser apps that need near-real-time updates. The obvious one is chat. In fact, most of our XMPP clients are specialized to do that. Other applications are collaboration software, like a shared whiteboard (if sending SVG over XMPP would not be a bandwidth hog). Video lectures with auto advancing slides might be another one. Fleet tracking might be another. MMORPGs would also be easier to write on such a platform. It'd be interesting to see where this goes, or if something better comes along.

bct 19y ago
> I imagine one should be able to take the mozilla engine and tack XMPP instead of HTTP in front (probably easier said than done). Already done: http://dev.hyperstruct.net/xmpp4moz http://dev.hyperstruct.net/xmpp4moz It's really cool, it's a pity it doesn't get more attention. There used to be a whiteboard demo on that site somewhere.
- iamwil 19y ago
  Sweet. Thanks for the info. Goes to show you you're almost never the first to think of something.

1gor 19y ago

Well, I was intrigues first. But then I found [this](http://about.psyc.eu/Jabber http://about.psyc.eu/Jabber)... Which points out that >"I have been Jabber server administrator and a Jabber advocate for a few years and most complaints about Jabber I have heard was about its link-level inreliability"... > From a protocol and architectural point of view Jabber generates a lot more traffic than is necessary >It's not a question of religion - it's not true that one format is like another - there are clear and logical technical reasons why XML is plain wrong for this purpose. >XMPP isn't XML, really... Other than that - XMPP is cool, and we get to write servers in Erlang!