Using Jabber to send network messages

Question

(Also asked over on ServerFault, where I was advised to post it here too)

We have a requirement to send desktop alerts to various users (compliance, production)

Answer 1

Openfire is a java based Jabber server that seems to be targeted to a corporate/business environment and provides the "toast" message feature with their Spark client. They also offer several other useful business-focused features.

Answer 2

Offline message delivery is not guaranteed by XMPP specification. It depends on concrete server implementation. Moreover, it has cost in supporting user accounts. As an out-of-box solution it is fine, but since we are in development community, I would consider building alert system using MessageQueue for guaranteed delivery.

Answer 3

The message-delivery semantics of XMPP are liable to be a good fit for your application, since you're not talking about financial transactions that require fiduciary-level delivery guarantees. It will certainly be better than NET SEND by a lot.

Write a simple client that listens for messages and does the pop-ups in whatever format you want, and have the program run in the background, perhaps with a tray icon. Writing something like that with Jabber-Net would be the work of a few hours, for example.