First, Karsten is quite correct about my Jabber comments being outside the scope of my project. On the little roadmap I am developing there is a point, after lots of other things are working, when I will become concerned with a more robust authentication model.
When that happens, if somebody has some Jabber work done that helps me I will use it. If there is a cleaner solution (90% sure there will be), I will use that. That means while I think Jabber is interesting it is ABSOLUTELY off the map for the FreeMED billing project. So don't interpret my interest in Jabber in general as a lose of focus. I am interested in talking about Jabber in its own right, not as a developer in this case, but rather as a user. In that context John, I think that a Jabber based communication system ultimately has useful features that email doesn't have. In point of fact a Jabber based system could easily be used to implement a Que based messaging system, which means that it can operate in the same fashion as email... The problem that I have with email is that it is difficult to integrate into a Practice Management System from a security perspective. For instance what level of email filtering would I need to do to make sure than only inside the office emails discussed patients?? That is a pretty difficult problem, that only really becomes ugly if you intend to do tight integration between your messaging system and your Practice Management System... It would be easier to make Jabber fulfill what are essentially a very complicated system of requirements. For instance the Doctors need a message Que, they will not go for an interruption based system... But they would like the ability to communicate with their staff quickly... I imagine a system that might have a very complex system of Data-Sensitive Access Control Lists that carefully limit what is possible between certain groups. Doctors can message patients this way... Patients can communicate with Doctors with these rules... Staff -> Doctors, Doctor -> Doctor.. Again I think it is a mistake to think of Jabber as a "Chat" System... Think of it as messaging architecture that is more capable than email and I think more pleasant possibilities surface... Also Chat will clearly not work... You are absolutely right there... Fred Trotter
