How does RabbitMQ compare to XMPP for publish/subscribe messaging?

[Virgil Kuruthers]

I am researching protocols for publish/subscribe messaging.  I'm trying to figure out if XMPP offers any advantages over RabbitMQ.  I know all their payload is XML, so that's obviously more overhead.  I also know that the RabbitMQ server software is very solid.  AMQP seems more flexible to me.

Apart from that I'm not sure if XMPP is better in any way.  Can anyone share their experience with XMPP?

Thank you,

Virgil

[Michael Klishin]

 On 21 October 2014 at 00:53:28, Virgil Kuruthers (vkuru...@gmail.com) wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out if XMPP offers any advantages over RabbitMQ.
> I know all their payload is XML, so that's obviously more overhead.
> I also know that the RabbitMQ server software is very solid. AMQP
> seems more flexible to me.
>
> Apart from that I'm not sure if XMPP is better in any way. Can anyone
> share their experience with XMPP?

XMPP is *much* broader in scope + it is more extensible. It handles presence
much well (possibly better than any other popular protocol), which RabbitMQ
doesn't do well.

RabbitMQ handles reliable delivery and processing (for both publishers and consumers)
much better.

What problem are you looking to solve?
--
MK

Staff Software Engineer, Pivotal/RabbitMQ

[Virgil Kuruthers]

Thanks Michael.

I am not interested in presence.  I am most interested in reliable delivery & stable, scalable server side software.  I also prefer pure binary messaging.  I'm pretty sure AMQP is hard to beat there.

I also do some work in electric power inverters (devices that convert DC to AC, e.g. for solar power).  The industry is looking for a new protocol there, currently MODBUS TCP is used, but it's very old and primitive.  I do see some talk of using XMPP, but in my mind AMQP would be more suitable.  XMPP started off as a chat protocol, right?

Thanks,

Virgil.

[Michael Klishin]

 On 21 October 2014 at 03:50:38, Virgil Kuruthers (vkuru...@gmail.com) wrote:
> I am most interested in reliable delivery & stable, scalable
> server side software. I also prefer pure binary messaging. I'm
> pretty sure AMQP is hard to beat there.

OK, then some of the protocols supported by RabbitMQ might be what you are looking for (AMQP 0-9-1, STOMP, MQTT 3.1).

> I also do some work in electric power inverters (devices that
> convert DC to AC, e.g. for solar power). The industry is looking
> for a new protocol there, currently MODBUS TCP is used, but it's
> very old and primitive. I do see some talk of using XMPP, but in
> my mind AMQP would be more suitable. XMPP started off as a chat
> protocol, right?

Actually, it was started for machine-to-machine communication but has taken
off in the IM and MUC (multi-user chat) space, and has been growing in that area for
over a decade.

As far as "scalable" goes, it's more of a protocol implementation characteristic
if you ask me. Many XMPP sub-standards are decentralised and one of the most
widely deployed implementations is also in Erlang (ejabberd).