"I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy." Patrick Logan's weblog.

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Saturday, September 22, 2007

Biztalk Services In The Cloud, Or: Why Not Jingle All The Way

Jon Udell mentioned Biztalk's Internet Service Bus a while back. I'm just getting caught up with that.

Curiously, in this video they mention using WCF and Biztalk Services to implement a chat that can traverse firewalls, etc.

Have they considered not hurting the web and using IETF standards like XMPP? XMPP defines an HTTP-based client. And the Jingle (XEP-0166) proposal, em, which actually has some implementations, extends all *that* to accommodate higher-bandwidth, out-of-band, protocols for VOIP, includes firewall negotiation, etc. to figure out if they need to go through a server.

Ah, but, yeah, we could just use this Microsoft code and go non-standard all the way. Maybe I'm missing something. Or maybe you're happy in your little Microsoft corner of the internets.

6 comments:

João Pedro "jota" Martins said...

Hello,

I think you could see things in a different way. MS is NOT building a platform for you to build messenger-like apps on top of, but rather building a hosted messaging system. You could use it for messenger-like apps, but were this has the potential to be rather big is in business/enterprise scenarios.

Patrick Logan said...

"has the potential to be rather big is in business/enterprise scenarios"

Yes, and so they should use internet standards like XMPP. Or rather, Microsoft should be ignored and businesses should opt to go with open standards.

Open standards may not be in Microsoft's interest, but they are in the interest of business generally.

João Pedro "jota" Martins said...

You mean Ws-* is not standard?

That "ms is evil" discourse is very old fashioned.

Patrick Logan said...

ws-* is not a simple standard considering the relative simplicity and trending toward internet standards, http and increasingly xmpp.

I'm getting over the MS is evil idea, and am almost squarely in the MS is big and dumb idea.

João Pedro "jota" Martins said...

Hello again Patrick.

If you read the docs again, and see the already interesting feature set "biztalk services" already has today, you'll see that it can be used for much more than chat-like apps. This is what a lot of enterprises wished they had for a long, LONG time, and there are several business scenarios you can implement with this technology.

Criticizing MS and this technology is similar to criticizing letters you post in the mail, because their contents are not standartized. If you are going to criticize, please do it honestly and with valid arguments.

Patrick Logan said...

"used for much more than chat-like apps. This is what a lot of enterprises wished they had for a long, LONG time"

Yep, my point is an enterprise should want to implement these using an open standard like XMPP (and HTTP for that matter). XMPP is not just for chat either.

"If you are going to criticize, please do it honestly and with valid arguments."

Hopefully, this argument is honest and valid. I believe it to be so. I work in a large enterprise, and I believe the above to be honest and valid, whether it is made relative to MSFT, or IBM, or any other vendor.

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Portland, Oregon, United States
I'm usually writing from my favorite location on the planet, the pacific northwest of the u.s. I write for myself only and unless otherwise specified my posts here should not be taken as representing an official position of my employer. Contact me at my gee mail account, username patrickdlogan.