London Ajax User Group Meetup: Comet Panel

Sometimes Ajax isn't enough. When you need real-time capabilities for your application, whether it is for chat, collaboration, multi-person editing, games, stock trading platforms, remote monitoring, and more, Comet offers the optimizations needed on both the client-side and server-side to get your app performing as needed.

On July 13th, Comet invades London. The panel will be moderated by Dylan Schiemann, and will include panelists representing the following projects:

APE, cometD-Jetty, DWR, Liberator, Lightstreamer, Meteor, & WebSync. We're also hoping to get a few more projects represented.

The most recent Comet panel that we know of was held at Google in 2009 in the bay area: http://www.youtube.co... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_t9PS51IE)

Please sign-up to attend as space is limited. And if you cannot make it, fear not, as video will be online shortly after the event.

Schedule:
6pm: Meet & Greet
6:15pm: Lightning Talks
6:30pm: Panel
8pm: Pub

Also, Skills Matter is sponsoring the venue for the event. They have asked us to RSVP there... http://skillsmatter.c... (http://skillsmatter.com/event/ajax-ria/comet-panel/rl-890)

The event is also kindly sponsored by http://sitepen.com/... (http://sitepen.com/) , http://cometdaily.com... (http://cometdaily.com/) , http://oreilly.com/... (http://oreilly.com/) and http://jsfiddle.net/... (http://jsfiddle.net/)

If you have questions for the panelists, please add them at http://www.google.com... (http://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=1075a)

Some more details on the projects:

APE : http://www.ape-projec... (http://www.ape-project.org/) (Anthony and John visiting from France)

APE is a full-featured OpenSource solution (GPL) designed for Ajax Push. It includes a web server and a Javascript Framework. The Ajax Push Engine Project is divided into two distinct parts. The most central part is our HTTP streaming server, the APE Server. Through the APE Protocol, the APE JavaScript Framework sends and receives the actions on the client side. The protocol is JSON-based and can be easily extended using the power of the server-side JavaScript implementation.

List of Demos : http://www.ape-projec... (http://www.ape-project.org/demos/)

cometD-Jetty: http://cometd.org... (http://cometd.org) (Simone Bordet from Italy)

Simone Bordet is a Java Senior Consultant at Webtide, now part of Intalio. Active open source developer, he founded and contributed to various open source projects such as Jetty, cometD, MX4J, Foxtrot, LiveTribe, and others. Simone has been technical speaker at various national and international conferences such as JavaOne and Webbit, and is an active contributor to the Java User Group of Torino, Italy. Simone specializes in server-side multi-thread development, J2EE application development and in Comet technologies applied to web development.

The primary purpose of cometD project is to implement responsive user interactions for web clients using Ajax and using the server-push technique called Comet. The cometD project provides the Bayeux specification, that defines the protocol used to exchange information between client and server, and provides standardized APIs for servers and clients.

Example: http://cometd.org/doc... (http://cometd.org/documentation/howtos/primer)

DWR: http://directwebremot... (http://directwebremoting.org/)

Joe Walker works for Mozilla on Web Developer Tools including Bespin and features for Firefox 4. He is also the creator and former project lead of the DWR framework (Java+JavaScript+Ajax). He is a frequent speaker at industry events like InfoQ, JavaOne, FoWA and The Ajax Experience. He is an author of Ajax in Practice by Manning, and blogs at http://directwebremot... (http://directwebremoting.org/blog/joe)

DWR is a Java library that enables Java on the server and JavaScript in a browser to interact and call each other as simply as possible.

Lightstreamer: http://www.lightstrea... (http://www.lightstreamer.com/) (Alessandro Alinone visiting from Italy)

Alessandro Alinone created Lightstreamer back in 2000. Lightstreamer was one of the very first push servers optimized for the delivery of real-time data to standard HTML pages. Since then, Lightstreamer has been chosen by first-class financial institutions around the globe, as well as gaming, sporting, entertainment, transportation, and military companies, to push real-time data to AJAX, Flex, Silverlight, Java, .NET, iPhone, and Android applications. Alessandro, who is currently co-CEO and CTO at Weswit (the Italian company behind Lightstreamer) studied and trained at Politecnico di Milano University, CEFRIEL, and SDA Bocconi Business School.

Demos:
* All-demo launch page: http://www.lightstrea... (http://www.lightstreamer.com/demos.htm)
* A specific cool demo: http://www.lightstrea... (http://www.lightstreamer.com/demo/BandwidthDemo/)

WebSync: http://www.frozenmoun... (http://www.frozenmountain.com/websync) (Jerod Venema visiting from USA)

About Jerod: http://cometdaily.com... (http://cometdaily.com/people/jerod_venema/)

WebSync is a highly scalable HTTP Comet/Reverse Ajax server built for the Microsoft stack (ASP.NET/IIS) using the Bayeux protocol. WebSync allow you to push live data to a web browser or any other compatible client without requiring any plugins, security changes, or dedicated servers. WebSync leverages the power and ubiquity of IIS to allow easy integration into existing applications with a simple learning curve. WebSync is currently used for chat, streaming stock data, live auctions, real-time monitoring, news updates, and many other applications.

Meteor Server: http://meteorserver.o... (http://meteorserver.org/) (Andrew Betts from London)

Andrew is the founder of a London-based web development firm. His interest in Comet results from working with publishing clients who have used real-time data to webcast chats, live blogs, election coverage and election results. When they started there were no technologies available to do this so they created Meteor in September 2006. Its great to see the concept maturing and moving into the mainstream!

Meteor is an HTTP server which gives developers the freedom to think about web development in an entirely new way. It comprises the Meteor server and a standalone JavaScript class which can be used in webpages to provide an abstraction layer for receiving data streams. Designed to be as simple and flexible as possible, Meteor offers a great solution for those wishing to add asynchronous functionality to their web projects.

Demo: http://meteorserver.o... (http://meteorserver.org/examples/angst/)

Liberator: http://www.caplin.com... (http://www.caplin.com/caplin_liberator.php) (Martin Tyler from London)

Martin is Chief Software Architect at Caplin and has been there since 1997. He designed and implemented their core product, Liberator in 2000 and continues to work on it along with their development team

Liberator is at the core of Caplin's product offering which focuses on web based trading applications. Liberator is a highly performant Comet server, written in C, primarily on Unix. Liberator is designed for the financial markets, so along with core Comet server functionality it also contains various features tailored to the requirements that financial applications put forward. Liberator is a commercial product http://www.caplin.com... (http://www.caplin.com/caplin_liberator.php), but a few years ago they released a free version for non commercial use - http://www.freelibera... (http://www.freeliberator.com)