I do not want to judge whether it is easier to clean up the XMPP mess or to implement a different transport. Fact is that the wave usage of XMPP is technically not exactly straight forward, while the HTTP approach is much more straight forward. Thus, in case of a doubt, a lean and clean technical solution (which HTTP transport is IMHO) is preferable.
Up until now there are very few implementations of the XMPP federation protocol. Thus, the damage of switching is rather small for the community as a whole. I did one XMPP federation implementation myself for the server-side of QWave and I am more than happy to abondon it. It is a large and rather complex piece of code. The ultimate goal of a federation protocol is to gain traction in form of many independent implementations. Going the XMPP way means for a developer to: a) Set up an XMPP server, setup DNS SRV records, setup XMPP server certificates. In contrast, by using HTTP developers can simply reuse their existing HTTP infrastructure which every self-respecting web developer should have :-) b) Write some XMPP lib that supports the pub/sub extension (many client libs do not implement this feature). For some languages it is hard to find anything stable at all. HTTP in contrast is supported by everything that can add two numbers. c) Encode messages as protobuf, sign them, base 64 encode them, emebed them in XMPP's XML stanzas. Then write code to decode this again.With HTTP, we are just sending plain ProtoBufs, which is much easier to get right. So far the wave-via-XMPP idea had little success in form of independent implementations and this is although Google promoted it. My hope is that using HTTP will lower the entry barrier for using wave federation. This is nothing religious and it is not because I dislike XMPP. I think there are good reasons to believe that the HTTP protocol will have more uptake and usage because it is simple. BTW: WiaB will support both protocols. During the wave protocol summit, a large group gathered with the aim to do something about the XMPP-induced complexity of federation. Nobody volunteered to improve the XMPP state of things. This shows where the community of wave developers is heading currently. In the end, developers are deciding with their fingers on the keyboard. Greetings Torben 2010/11/17 Dave butlerdi <[email protected]> > Perhaps, however some of us have substantial development efforts that, at > least in our case, leverage XMPP. In the end it really does not matter what > decisions are taken and several > protocols may be developed/deployed/available however there has been effort > using the XMPP proto. > > Secondly, I have a difficult time understanding the difficulty in setting > up and integrating XMPP servers. If this truly is a problem would it not be > wise just to clean this up > making it substantially easier for non XMPP folks ? > > > > > Regards > > Dave Butler > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Wave Protocol" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<wave-protocol%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/wave-protocol?hl=en. > -- --------------------------- Prof. Torben Weis Universitaet Duisburg-Essen [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Wave Protocol" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/wave-protocol?hl=en.
