Monday, 18 October 2004
Remembering stuff...
The rewrite of Idavoll, dubbed Idavoll 2, is
starting to shape up. Besides the volatile memory backend, I started
working on a second backend, using PostgreSQL for storage. It uses
Twisted
Enterprise, that provides asynchronous access to any DB-API
2.0 compliant database interface, in this case pyPgSQL.
I'm still learning how to code in the Twisted Way™, and having two
separate backends helps figure out how to use Services, Interfaces and
Adaptors in a productive way. Having thought about Idavoll's architecture
a bit more, it would probably be a good idea to spread the pubsub features
over several backend interfaces, with matching adaptors. That way, one
can create custom backends that implement a limited set of functionality,
or have a service that offers some functionality using other protocols.
Examples:
A service with a web interface to manage the nodes,
affiliations, and subscriptions.
A HTTP interface for publishing data, using REST or
SOAP. Like Atom API.
Using SMTP for notifications.
I plan to redo the backend for Mimír this way. While being able
to setup your channel subscriptions via the Jabber pubsub protocol, the
web interface could be reimplemented as an Adaptor between the backend
interface and Twisted
Web or Nevow.
But that is the future. Back to creating the building
blocks.
Wednesday, 6 October 2004
Picking up the pace...
In light of several ideas that I've been thinking about during my
commute cycling trips and under the shower (those are the best places!),
I'm back at my work on Idavoll, the generic
Jabber pubsub service, as described in JEP-0060. For my
daytime job, I've been coding in Python as well, and going back to
Idavoll I see I have to do a bit of refactoring to make the code more
elegant, shorter and above all: more readable. I'm committed to work on
Idavoll regularly from now on, adding features as I go, so watch this
space for updates.
Tuesday, 5 October 2004
Press release in dutch...
Bart van Bragt was kind
enough to translate the JSF press release into dutch, and alert various
dutch news sources. Since the US part of our community is asleep, I
put it
up on planet.jabber.org, with the same nice
layout as on jabber.org itself.
Finally...
After two-and-a-half years work, the IETF has published the XMPP
specifications as RFCs. For more information see the press release
from the Jabber Software
Foundation. These are the actual RFCs:
RFC
3920: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core
RFC
3921: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP):
Instant Messaging and Presence
RFC
3922: Mapping the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
(XMPP) to Common Presence and Instant Messaging
(CPIM)
RFC
3923: End-to-End Signing and Object Encryption for the
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)
Congratulations to all involved in the work of the XMPP Working
Group and Jabber in general. A special mention of two people: jer,
thanks for starting this all back in 1999, and 
stpeter, thanks for all
the hard work you put into cranking out these specification!
Jabber Rocks!