I’d like to share a word on communication. We’ve decided to start with Jabber (www.jabber.org) as the communication layer between the various components. Jabber is great because it can be as simple as you want while allowing for practically limitless expansion. Given the open nature of Jabber, for example, we could write our own server components that ‘plug in’ to the jabber server and perform additional tasks on messages besides simply routing them through the messaging network.
Bibliographic Data Storage and Access
Though there haven’t been many requests for the information in this post, we felt it would be a good idea to keep everyone up to date on the internal direction and progress we are making, much as Jason’s earlier post regarding the Staff Client did. What follows is an overview of where we are with regard to our storage and retrieval of library specific data. We will be focusing on the domain specific stuff, especially bibliographic data in the form of MARC records.
Staff Client
The database and middle layers have been progressing as expected, but we are choosing a new direction with the client half of things. This is only unfortunate in that the user interface is the most visible and graspable part of the system, and it would have been nice to have screenshots and mockups by this time in the project, even if only to solicit feedback from others. However, we are very fortunate in that we are now utilizing a powerful and versatile framework known as XUL (which stands for XML User Interface Language and is pronounced Zool).