Just few hours after blogging about the Atom blogging feature being now developed in CXF, I thought it might be worth checking what was actually happening with Abdera which we currently depend upon in CXF.
I actually noticed before not much was happening in the project by briefly looking at the main page but did not pay any attention to it. This time I clicked few more links, and when reading the November archive I just experienced a number of conflicting emotions during few minutes :-), starting from the disappointment and ending with a cautious optimism.
What I do not understand is how a project which by many users is assumed to be a Reference Implementation of everything to do with Atom and AtomPub ended up being nearly retired ? How it could have happened given that just a couple of years ago AtomPub and Atom were probably one of the most talked about technologies ? They were touted as candidates for a complete replacement for SOAP given that Feed provides an envelope-like wrapper around (data) Entries ?
Well, it is not that important today. The thing is that actually many users do use AtomPub and Atom. Things are happening on the atom-syntax list. Abdera is obviously not the only way to create Atom Feeds or Entries but it just a very good library for doing it. IMHO it is a perfect library for users to use when they need to create sophisticated and real-life feeds or entries. I am not so optimistic about Abdera acting as a standalone server framework, IMHO it is not why most users are relying on Abdera. I would personally like to see it moving toward imlementing other promising Atom draft specs, etc.
In CXF we are sticking with Abdera for the time being. As far as the Atom logging feature is concerned, using Atom was a rather obvious choice due to the fact it was the most cost effective way to have the interesting events be delived to a variety of the existing Atom-aware consumers.
We hope Abdera will help us. We would like Abdera, the Atom and AtomPub RI to live and succeed. This project needs a leader and it is good to know James Snell is planning to reengage.
Do you remember Microsoft Web3S ? I thought it was a good effort, but the Atom won.
So will Abdera stay around ? Come on, Abdera !
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2 comments:
I am also frustrated by the abandonment of the Abdera project. I would have thought someone might have kept it going, but it has languished with many pieces incomplete and buggy.
IMHO, James Snell was the main driver. Without his dedicated enthusiam, Abdera has declined proportionally.
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