XEP-0117: Intermediate IM Protocol Suite

This document defines a recommended suite of Jabber/XMPP protocols to be supported by intermediate instant messaging and presence applications.


NOTICE: The protocol defined herein is a Draft Standard of the XMPP Standards Foundation. Implementations are encouraged and the protocol is appropriate for deployment in production systems, but some changes to the protocol are possible before it becomes a Final Standard.


Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0117
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Version: 1.0
Last Updated: 2005-07-21
Approving Body: XMPP Council
Dependencies: XMPP Core, XMPP IM, XEP-0045, XEP-0071, XEP-0073, XEP-0096, XEP-0115
Supersedes: None
Superseded By: None
Short Name: N/A
Wiki Page: <http://wiki.jabber.org/index.php/Intermediate IM Protocol Suite (XEP-0117)>

Author Information

Peter Saint-Andre

Email: stpeter@jabber.org
JabberID: stpeter@jabber.org

Legal Notice

This XMPP Extension Protocol is copyright 1999 - 2007 by the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) and is in full conformance with the XSF's Intellectual Property Rights Policy <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/ipr-policy.shtml>. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Creative Commons Attribution License (<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/>).

Discussion Venue

The preferred venue for discussion of this document is the Standards discussion list: <http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/standards>.

Relation to XMPP

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 3920) and XMPP IM (RFC 3921) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.

Conformance Terms

The following keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".


Table of Contents


1. Introduction
2. Requirements and Approach
3. Definition
4. Security Considerations
5. IANA Considerations
6. XMPP Registrar Considerations
Notes
Revision History


1. Introduction

The Basic IM Protocol Suite [1] introduced the concept of a "protocol suite". This document extends the basic support specified in XEP-0073 by specifying an Intermediate IM Protocol Suite.

2. Requirements and Approach

This document follows the same approach as XEP-0073. By design, the Basic IM Protocol Suite does not include more advanced instant messaging functionality; the present document fills the need for a protocol suite that addresses such functionality.

A protocol is deemed worthy of inclusion in this protocol suite if:

3. Definition

We define the Intermediate IM Protocol Suite as follows:

Table 1: Required and Recommended Specifications

Specification Requirement Level
XEP-0073: Basic IM Protocol Suite REQUIRED
Multi-User Chat [3] REQUIRED
XHTML-IM [4] REQUIRED
File Transfer [5] REQUIRED
Entity Capabilities [6] REQUIRED

Note well that the foregoing protocols apply to clients only (i.e., they do not introduce new requirements for servers). In addition, these protocols have their own dependencies, which include the following XEPs (as well as various IETF RFCs and W3C specifications):

In addition, because the intermediate suite builds on the basic suite, by definition all protocols required by XEP-0073 are also required by the intermediate suite (refer to XEP-0073 for details).

4. Security Considerations

This document introduces no additional security considerations above and beyond those defined in the documents on which it depends.

5. IANA Considerations

This document requires no interaction with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [14].

6. XMPP Registrar Considerations

No namespaces or parameters need to be registered with the XMPP Registrar [15] as a result of this document.


Notes

1. XEP-0073: Basic IM Protocol Suite <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0073.html>.

2. XEP-0001: XMPP Extension Protocols <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0001.html>.

3. XEP-0045: Multi-User Chat <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html>.

4. XEP-0071: XHTML-IM <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0071.html>.

5. XEP-0096: File Transfer <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0096.html>.

6. XEP-0115: Entity Capabilities <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0115.html>.

7. XEP-0004: Data Forms <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0004.html>.

8. XEP-0020: Feature Negotiation <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0020.html>.

9. XEP-0047: In-Band Bytestreams <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0047.html>.

10. XEP-0065: SOCKS5 Bytestreams <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0065.html>.

11. XEP-0068: Field Data Standardization for Data Forms <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0068.html>.

12. XEP-0082: XMPP Date and Time Profiles <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0082.html>.

13. XEP-0095: Stream Initiation <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0095.html>.

14. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the central coordinator for the assignment of unique parameter values for Internet protocols, such as port numbers and URI schemes. For further information, see <http://www.iana.org/>.

15. The XMPP Registrar maintains a list of reserved protocol namespaces as well as registries of parameters used in the context of XMPP extension protocols approved by the XMPP Standards Foundation. For further information, see <http://www.xmpp.org/registrar/>.


Revision History

Version 1.0 (2005-07-21)

Per a vote of the Jabber Council, advanced status to Draft. (psa)

Version 0.7 (2005-06-08)

Further clarified dependencies. (psa)

Version 0.6 (2005-06-02)

Per Council discussion, modified the XEP-0045 profile to require all MUC use cases. (psa)

Version 0.5 (2005-04-21)

Modified the XEP-0045 profile to require occupant use cases and instant room creation only. (psa)

Version 0.4 (2004-08-18)

Clarified several matters in the text; changed name from "advanced" to "intermediate". (psa)

Version 0.3 (2004-03-24)

Updated to reflect approval of XMPP Core and XMPP IM. (psa)

Version 0.2 (2003-11-24)

Changed status to Deferred. (psa)

Version 0.1 (2003-09-08)

Initial version. (psa)

END