Javaspaces and perl

[Paul Golds]

On 11/8/06, Elizabeth Mattijsen <liz at dijkmat.nl> wrote:
> At 12:27 PM +0000 11/8/06, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> >This sounds very much like a message queue with multiple concurrent
> >readers and  writers.
>
> And that sounds like something you could do with the Jabber protocol to me...

It could be, but from my (admittedly limited) exposure to messsage
queues and Jabvver it's not the ideal technology to build it on.  It's
similar to the situation with databases, you can store your data quite
happily as CSVs in the filesystem, but if you're going to be making
heavy use of it some kind of DBMS is normally in order.

A proper message queue system will happily keep messages should there
be no consumers connected who can deal with it, it'll also tend to
have a lot more robustness built into it to avoid losing messages in
the event of system error than a Jabber IM-oriented server has any
need for, and often applying nicities such as transactional behaviour
across messages and so forth.

A closer fit can actually be drawn between a message queue and a
robust email system, where the messages are kept in the system until
someone comes along to read and delete them, and where if the power
plug's pulled the unread mail should be there waiting for you when you
turn it all on again.

Paul