A Case Study: UIM The Universal Instant Messenger

1
A Case Study UIMThe Universal Instant Messenger

• Babak Esfandiari
• Carleton University
• SYSC 5800
• Winter 2003

2
What is UIM?

• UIM is a small Instant Messaging program,
  developed by your instructor for this course!
• Unfortunately it only works locally, in a single
  JVM
• It will be up to you to make it work over the
  internet!

3
But What is Instant Messaging?

• One of the most popular internet tools
• Allows users to send and receive short messages
  to buddies over the net
• Users can track the availability of their buddies
• More features have been added to most programs
  file transfer, audio, even video

4
Some IM Programs

• ICQ, by Mirabilis (later purchased by AOL)
• the pioneer
• AIM (AOL)
• MSN Messenger
• Yahoo Messenger
• Jabber

5
How Does IM Work?

• It is one of the first popular peer-to-peer
  applications
• Usually a server manages the user ids, their
  buddy list and status info
• But clients communicate directly with one another
• But not all IM tools work this way..

6
IM Challenges and Promises

• Scalability
• Performance
• Privacy
• Standardization
• Jabber, SIMPLE,
• Integration in other tools
• Presence a desired feature for many devices!
  (not only for humans)

7
Back to UIM

• You will be asked to enhance UIM
• The next few slides will give you an overview of
  its initial design.

8
UIM Requirements
9
UIM States
10
UIM Packages
11
The Client Package
12
The Server Package
13
Interaction 1 Status Update
14
Interaction 2 Sending an IM
15
Running UIM

• Unzip the Jar file
• run the main() method in the AgentGui class
• it will open two UIM windows (one on top of the
  other)
• you can now register users, log them on, change
  their status, send messages