Why Enterprise Chat Apps isn’t built on Server-side Database like Hangouts, Slack, & Hipchat?

One of the most significant tools for any organization to smoothen their collaborative world is only through a real-time chat application whether the conversation takes place on mobile or desktop. Hangouts, Slack and Hipchat have been in action for businesses to establish a decent conversation between their internal employees and clients right from small-scale to enterprises.

Those big players come into play where there requires team collaboration. The big players are built on a server-side database where the messages shared from one device to another is stored in their server database. Ultimately, this results in storing a huge amount of data within the server-side database (Cloud-database).

The consumption of cloud storage will be pretty high. The client-side database is more efficient where the messages relayed is stored in the client device. The messages will be queued to minimize the consumption of data in the server.

To make it more interesting, let’s get onto a brief understanding of chat-functionality on a server-side database and client-side database.

Chat Functionality

Server-side database

• A single token key is carried to transmit messages from the client to the server.
• The script runs on server instead of client server.

Client-side database

• Transmission of messages from the server to the client is carried by accessing token keys.
• The client-server sends a request to multiple servers to access the message with the help of the token key available on the client-side.

As said that, in a group chat application, the number of messages relayed between the server and client is large, message queuing will be one of the most destructive issues. To handle the message queuing in the servers, MUC & PubSup was introduced to handle the multi-user messaging. MUC (Multi-user Chat) XMPP protocol designed for multiple users to communicate simultaneously and PubSup for senders to send messages directly to receivers.

MirrorFly, an enterprise messaging solution uses the most versatile servers PubSup and MUC component to handle the concurrent users within a group chat or channel or even community.

Let’s see how MirrorFly uses the servers to handle the concurrent user base in real-time chat server that includes group, channel and Community chats.

How MirrorFly Uses MUC and PubSup Servers To Handle Millions Messages At a Time?

• Relying on both MUC and PubSup servers, the MUC component takes control of the entire accessibility and administration for the user count of about 1000+ members in a group and community chat.

• It provides the users of the community, group chat to create any number of channels where the concurrent user base doesn’t cross 1000+ users.

• On the line of security standard, the MUC component provides maximum security against data breaches when the user base limit is under 1 lakh.

• The MUC component losses its potential when the user base crosses 1 lakh where all the chat groups turn into being an open community from the invite-only mode.

• If the user base crosses 1 Lakh, MirrorFly infrastructure ensures to avail the PubSup server on real-time chat infrastructure to rely on messages from MirrorFly server to client server.

• PubSup stores the data (messages) on the client server (client device eg. mobile or desktop) which is accessible only by client token key. This operation takes place when the users’ device is in offline mode.

• Thus, the content (messages) stored on client-server is protected against any unauthorized access through the token key.

Bottom line

The chat infrastructure on every web and mobile application are designed on different servers, it depends on the application needs. Opting for client-side server based (on-premises hosting) chat infrastructure over cloud server-based chat application has more effectiveness in securing and handling the messages when the user base crosses in lakhs. Thus, the demand over on-premises hosting of chat application has its own value for enterprises and businesses who wish to build or integrate collaborative (chat) platform into your web or mobile applications to handle million+ conversations.