Leveraging an instant messaging protocol to build a scalable cloud architecture

XMPP is an open technology for real-time communication. Although primarily known for its application in the IM service “Jabber” (and, subsequently, gchat/gtalk), it has numerous applications and creates new opportunities for inter-system communication.

While researching for an alternative to webservices at Mendix, we came across XMPP and realized it solved many of the shortcomings of webservices. It is currently being used to handle all inter-system and inter-process communication in the Mendix cloud hosting environment.

The talk will give a general overview of what XMPP is, an introduction to the sleekxmpp python library and how the core features of xmpp can help an architecture scale well horizontally.

Required knowledge: basic understanding of hosting environments.