3 ms·

Why XMPP? Seems a bit of unneeded overhead.

microcolonel 7y ago
I never understood the desperate attempts to use XMPP, and the inevitable failure of EVERY attempt to run a popular messaging and/or presence application on it. If you want to IoT, why not just use NATS or something?
- ralls_ebfe 7y ago
  I am quite happy with xmpp being unpopular, as it means governmental pressure against E2E encryption will most likely never reach this place.
Lazare 7y ago
XMPP, a solution looking for a problem for over 20 years. :(
- feanaro 7y ago
  That's a little harsh. If it wasn't for Matrix, XMPP would probably be the best currently existing solution for a chat protocol.
  - Lazare 7y ago
    I fear that's more an indictment of available chat protocols, than it is a defence of XMPP. :)
userbinator 7y ago
Indeed. XML itself is nontrivial to parse and the "infinite" extensibility is just overkill for probably 99% of the time I've seen it used, XMPP included. As an aside, this article seems quite devoid of actual content, bordering on spam IMHO. The title mentions IoT but the term appears only once in the entire article at the end, in a vague "XMPP is for messaging and IoT also needs messaging, so.... XMPP and IoT!" way. This is the sort of page that clogs search engine results with useless non-content.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  XMPP's own extensibility is a huge stumbling block as well. Almost every major feature of the protocol is implemented as an optional extension, so it's very difficult for clients to rely on anything being consistently available.
  - upofadown 7y ago
    Well you have a choice. You make a protocol extensible and live with the fact that people are eventually going to extend it. Otherwise you choose a different fixed protocol for each and every task and live with the fact that you will never get any level of interoperability at all. If one complains about extensible protocols, one should be willing to come up with some other approach that works.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
    You frame it like a bad thing, while in reality it's a good thing that makes a protocol more resilient and capable to evolve.
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  What exactly is nontrivial in parsing XML? Any popular computer language has plenty of libraries for working with XML.
  - tylerl 7y ago
    When I'm building firmware for an ATMega or a Cortex-M0 or Tensilica device, the idea of dedicating the required space in my firmware for an XML parser, burning the CPU overhead for doing the parsing, losing the network overhead for the verbose text encoding... all this is absolutely absurd. Just so I can use XMPP? Why? That's my battery life getting wasted, that's my features getting displaced. There's no place for XML in iot, and definitely no place for XMPP. Even json is luxury you often can't afford, not if you want to make a reasonable cost target or battery life.
    - 7y ago

I never understood the desperate attempts to use XMPP, and the inevitable failure of EVERY attempt to run a popular messaging and/or presence application on it. If you want to IoT, why not just use NATS or something?

ralls_ebfe 7y ago
I am quite happy with xmpp being unpopular, as it means governmental pressure against E2E encryption will most likely never reach this place.

Lazare 7y ago

XMPP, a solution looking for a problem for over 20 years. :(

feanaro 7y ago
That's a little harsh. If it wasn't for Matrix, XMPP would probably be the best currently existing solution for a chat protocol.
- Lazare 7y ago
  I fear that's more an indictment of available chat protocols, than it is a defence of XMPP. :)

userbinator 7y ago

Indeed. XML itself is nontrivial to parse and the "infinite" extensibility is just overkill for probably 99% of the time I've seen it used, XMPP included. As an aside, this article seems quite devoid of actual content, bordering on spam IMHO. The title mentions IoT but the term appears only once in the entire article at the end, in a vague "XMPP is for messaging and IoT also needs messaging, so.... XMPP and IoT!" way. This is the sort of page that clogs search engine results with useless non-content.

duskwuff 7y ago
XMPP's own extensibility is a huge stumbling block as well. Almost every major feature of the protocol is implemented as an optional extension, so it's very difficult for clients to rely on anything being consistently available.
- upofadown 7y ago
  Well you have a choice. You make a protocol extensible and live with the fact that people are eventually going to extend it. Otherwise you choose a different fixed protocol for each and every task and live with the fact that you will never get any level of interoperability at all. If one complains about extensible protocols, one should be willing to come up with some other approach that works.
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  You frame it like a bad thing, while in reality it's a good thing that makes a protocol more resilient and capable to evolve.
Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
What exactly is nontrivial in parsing XML? Any popular computer language has plenty of libraries for working with XML.
- tylerl 7y ago
  When I'm building firmware for an ATMega or a Cortex-M0 or Tensilica device, the idea of dedicating the required space in my firmware for an XML parser, burning the CPU overhead for doing the parsing, losing the network overhead for the verbose text encoding... all this is absolutely absurd. Just so I can use XMPP? Why? That's my battery life getting wasted, that's my features getting displaced. There's no place for XML in iot, and definitely no place for XMPP. Even json is luxury you often can't afford, not if you want to make a reasonable cost target or battery life.
  - 7y ago