Bitmunk Developer Introduction

From DBWiki

Bitmunk Transaction Platform is based on a technology that Digital Bazaar invented called a Secure File Distribution Network (SFDN).

The entire SFDN system is designed to be platform and operating system agnostic. The current system is written in Java to guarantee compatibility with all systems at launch. Platform-specific C/C++/MFC/C#/etc clients and sales servers are being developed.

The communication mechanism between system components is done via XML/SOAP at the moment and will grow to encompass XML-RPC and other open communication methods in the future. You can download the WSDL specification for the SVA as well as the WSDL specification for the Sales Server. Please do not begin developing clients and sales servers until the API has stabilized - while we're comfortable with the current API, things might need to change slightly once the system has been under considerable load for extended periods of time.

The entire back-end for the SVA is implemented using open-source technology - Apache, PHP, Python, MySQL, Lustre FS, Starfish, and Java running on top of Debian Linux. A very sincere thank you to those developers that have contributed to these and other open source projects - we are here today because we have stood on the shoulders of giants. Our plan is to reciprocate in turn by releasing many open source, license-free libraries and tools for general use and for inter-operating with the SFDN.

We will release a developer's API and open source clients for Bitmunk in the future. However, our software is still being changed quite frequently, so we do not want to release an API that will likewise be changing, causing developers to have to continually update their own work.

At Digital Bazaar, we are committed to the open source effort. We are hopeful that developers will take advantage of our efforts to make it easy for them to develop their own Bitmunk clients in the future. We envision that a wide variety of Bitmunk clients, with their own special features and technology, will become available to the buyers, sellers, and creators that are part of Bitmunk.