On Thursday 26 June 2003 12:18 am, Lex Spoon wrote:
> Stephen Pair <stephen at pairhome.net> wrote:
> > Very nice!  Works like a charm...I tested it with my AIM account (using
> > a Jabber server AIM gateway)...now all we need is a Jabber server (or
> > did you do that too?).
>
> Jabber is actually carefully defined so that you can do a ton of stuff
> without needing to change the server per se.  You can just add things to
> the network that speak the Jabber protocol.
>
> I don't know the details, but I'd guess all the suggestions that have
> been posted don't actually require a custom Jabber server.  In fact,
> this flexibility is a nice reason to use Jabber to begin with.  It's
> more than just a chat network.
>
> I believe the setup is, you can add "server" type thingies at a
> well-known Jabber ID.  Then, you can send arbitrary XML messages to and
> from the server.  Talking over Jabber is thus a lot like talking over
> the Internet, except that users are not always logged in and users can
> have their IP change.   Heck, it even lets people log in more than one
> time simultaneously.
>

This is correct. Once you define a service in the config(which looks exactly 
like a normal Jabber client on the client side), it is now "trusted" by the 
Jabber server. That service entry specifies a namespace that it will 
handle... any messages that come in with that namespace get routed to the 
service component.

Additionally there is an jabber:x namespace that is designed to drop any well 
formed xml into for whatever purposes.

In previous life, I and some others developed a large scale facilities and 
device management system using the open source jabber server for all of our 
communications; it worked like a charm. 

The company tanked, but the software should be coming out of the IP battle... 
hopefully I'll be able to post some more info in the future if anyone is 
interested. Oh, and since I didn't know about Smalltalk then, the system was 
implemented in Python.  :)


> Similarly, writing a new Jabber server is like writing a new TCP/IP
> implementation.
>
> Right?

No, not like writing a new TCP/IP implementation... like writing an XML router 
;-)

>
> As a notable example, it should be utterly feasible to have the badge
> morphs talking over Jabber.
>
> Lex

Brian