This project contains an instant messaging system used as a vehicle for teaching distributed applications and middleware technologies. Currently there are two implementations of Chatter: one that uses CORBA and one that uses Ice (http://www.zeroc.com/). These implementations are independent. They do not share any code.

Both of the current implementations are rather minimal right now, however the Ice implementation is significantly more advanced than the CORBA implementation.

• Refine the Chatter implementations by enhancing the existing interfaces or by adding new interfaces.

• Improve the documentation.

• Attempt to merge the CORBA and Ice code bases to create a single set of sources that can be compiled for either CORBA or Ice operation. (It is unclear if this would actually be a good idea or not).

• Create a CORBA/Ice gateway so that the two Chatter implementations could interoperate.

• Create implemenations in other languages (Java? C#?)

• Create implementations for other middleware technologies (.NET? Web Services?)

Peter Chapin
chapinp@acm.org