[OPEN-ILS-DEV] The use of Jabber on Evergreen

[Don McMorris]

Note: the following message is my personal opinion only.

IMHO, Jabber makes an excellent back-end communication mechanism.  It 
was designed to efficiently transport data in an XML-based format, which 
is ideal for a program such as OpenSRF (which needs to transport 
structured text between nodes).

The fact that it doesn't scale is completely incorrect.  Jabber /does/ 
scale, and does so /extremely well/.  It's one of the reasons why Google 
(and other large chat services) uses it for their chat programs.

I'm not sure where the design argument comes in.  It's designed to 
transport text and data, and that's how Evergreen uses it.  The fact 
that it's /marketed/ as an IM server is different from how it's /designed/.

In short, properly configured and implemented, it's a scalable and 
efficient system for a cluster that needs to pass messages and 
structured data.  Why should we re-invent the wheel for something that 
works so incredibly well?

--Don

Edward Corrado wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Let me preface this by saying I don't personally have an issue with 
> Jabber being used as a communication tool in Evergreen, and I think 
> the experience in Georgia shows it does the job, however.....
>
> On multiple occasions when talking to people who have varying levels 
> of IT/programming background, but not too much experience with 
> Evergreen or other ILS software, they start to wonder about the choice 
> of Jabber to communicate within the software package. I hear things like:
>
>    "it is a weak link"
>    "it doesn't scale"
>    "it is a hack"
>    "why would they do that, Jabber isn't designed for use that way"
>    etc.
>
> As I mentioned, I think the experience in Georgia shows that Jabber 
> works for Evergreen, and can at least scale to the level of a state 
> wide public library system (which is bigger than anything I am 
> proposing here in NJ). However, I really don't know enough about the 
> choice of Jabber to respond in any other way than "the proof is in the 
> pudding, it works in Georgia." Can anyone offer me any better 
> arguments why the use of Jabber isn't a problem (or, for that matter, 
> confirm that it is)?
>
> Edward
>
>
>
>