What is the RebDev project?

As I mentioned in Better Developer Communications, improving developer communications for R3 is critical. By "critical" I mean that we will not do a bigger (in terms of users) release of R3 until we have a way to easily and accurately communicate about it.

Nutshell summary:

RebDev is the messaging (BBS/chat) backend for DevBase.

When DevBase was released, it was pointed out that it would be problematic without a messaging method attached to the storage mechanism. RebDev is that method.

The long story:

As you may or may not know, I've been writing BBS/chat/IM systems since the early 1980's, so I have a few strong opinions about how they should work. IMO, there are very few good systems out there. (The one I use most often, AltME, even lacks many of the features I require.)

Last month, I wrote RebTalk, an experiment using R3 for the interface. It proved that an R3-based GUI was easy to write and fairly stable. (We've improved text-edit since then too.) The back-end was just LNS (REBOL/Services).

Mid-December, I met up with my friend Ron Everett, and spent several hours talking about associative databases. If that name sounds familiar, recall that Ron made a presentation at the REBOL Devcon in Paris.

Ron has created what to me has been a dream project since my neurophysiology days (late 1970's): a true homogeneous associative database system. It is not based on tables, but on links between concepts, the neurons of the database. It's an amazing technology. Basically, it is a storage mechanism like the brain, and I understand the implications of that statement, and I don't say it lightly.

Anyway, the discussion got me inspired to rewrite the RebTalk backend, using some IOS associative/tagging techniques. The result is a very lean, extremely flexible messaging server that should do quite well as the "BBS" needed to properly support DevBase. (In essence, RebDev is really the start of Altissimo.)

So, RebDev has been up and running on the server for about a week now. I continue to test it... getting it ready for your usage. And, yes, it will be accessible via:

	R3 shell	This may not seem useful to you, but it is very useful to me, as I'm often logged via SSH to some remote location.
	R3 GUI	Small, simple, easy. And, helps us test R3.
	R2	We (community) can write a back-port to it for shell, and GUI if you want that too (maybe via RebGUI to make it easier).
	HTML in mobile CSS	Mainly for access from my (and your) iPhone or other mobile device.
	HTML in pretty CSS	For web users who prefer interfaces that look like PHPBBS.
	RSS	You users know who you are.
	Email	Because a lot of folks still use it.

The R3 shell and HTML mobile will be done first. Others will follow.

Conclusion:

So, there you have it. And, the architecture is beautiful and simple. It is exactly what I've wanted and should satisfy the needs I posted in my earlier blog... quite well in fact.

I will be saying a lot more about it very soon.

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