XMPP is very interesting; Ezra makes awesome stuff (Merb) so I will keep an eye on Vertebra; XMPP might do for cloud computing what MPI did for cluster computing... - Adam Kraut

Adam ... I hadn't even thought about using XMPP for message passing in the MPI sense. I'd be very curious about how you might go around implementing something like this in say NAMD. Wouldn't it be easier than doing it for MPI in some ways? - Deepak Singh

I wonder if the XMPP overhead would kill NAMD? In theory, if networks were blazing fast it could be possible... and I think you're right it would be much easier than programming MPI. - Adam Kraut

can we represent workflows like this with XMPP? http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/RESULT0... - Jean-Claude Bradley

This, and Ezra's Vertebrae are very cool. XMPP could hook together loosely coupled applications too. - Matt Wood

Matt, IMO, it's perfect for a LIMS type system, esp if you have multiple systems loosely connected and sharing things like samples etc - Deepak Singh

Jean-Claude, XMPP could be used to trigger the messages (essentially any messaging service would do that). Where are you running those workflows? Or planning to? - Deepak Singh

Deepak - that link gave is for a workflow that is done. Are you saying that XMPP is more for managing the execution of the workflow? - Jean-Claude Bradley

Correct. So at every step of the workflow, you could send a message to a controller that would then make a decision (start the next step, send you a text message, etc). At least in the design that I've been talking about. - Deepak Singh

Running services over XMPP is being in the works: http://www.xmpp.org/extensi... Johannes Wagener is the main guy behind this... it's open, so you're hereby invited to join. Or, just support the concept on the mailing list: ws-xmpp@xmpp.org In particular, someone who can write a Taverna wrapper would be really useful now! - Egon Willighagen