zaqar/doc/source/index.rst

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=============================================
Welcome to the Zaqar Developer Documentation!
=============================================

Zaqar is a multi-tenant cloud messaging and notification service for web
and mobile developers.

The service features a REST API, which developers can use to send messages
between various components of their SaaS and mobile applications, by using a
variety of communication patterns. Underlying this API is an efficient
messaging engine designed with scalability and security in mind. The Websocket
API is also available.

Other OpenStack components can integrate with Zaqar to surface events to end
users and to communicate with guest agents that run in the "over-cloud" layer.

.. note:: This documentation is generated by the Sphinx toolkit and lives in
   the Zaqar project source tree. Additional draft and project documentation
   regarding Zaqar and other components of OpenStack can be found on the
   `OpenStack Wiki`_, as well as in the user guides found on
   `docs.openstack.org`_.

.. _`OpenStack Wiki`: http://wiki.openstack.org
.. _`docs.openstack.org`: http://docs.openstack.org

Key features
============

Zaqar provides the following key features:

* Choice between two communication transports. Both with Keystone support:

  * Firewall-friendly, **HTTP-based RESTful API**. Many of today's developers
    prefer a more web-friendly HTTP API. They value the simplicity and
    transparency of the protocol, it's firewall-friendly nature, and it's huge
    ecosystem of tools, load balancers and proxies. In addition, cloud
    operators appreciate the scalability aspects of the REST architectural
    style.
  * **Websocket-based API** for persistent connections. Websocket protocol
    provides communication over persistent connections. Unlike HTTP, where
    new connections are opened for each request/response pair, Websocket can
    transfer multiple requests/responses over single TCP connection. It saves
    much network traffic and minimizes delays.

* Multi-tenant queues based on Keystone project IDs.
* Support for several common patterns including event broadcasting, task
  distribution, and point-to-point messaging.
* Component-based architecture with support for custom backends and message
  filters.
* Efficient reference implementation with an eye toward low latency and high
  throughput (dependent on backend).
* Highly-available and horizontally scalable.
* Support for subscriptions to queues. Several notification types are
  available:

  * Email notifications.
  * Webhook notifications.
  * Websocket notifications.

Project scope
=============

The Zaqar API is data-oriented. That is, it does not provision message brokers
and expose those directly to clients. Instead, the API acts as a bridge between
the client and one or more backends. A provisioning service for message
brokers, however useful, serves a somewhat different market from what Zaqar is
targeting today. With that in mind, if users are interested in a broker
provisioning service, the community should consider starting a new project to
address that need.

Design principles
=================

Zaqar, as with all OpenStack projects, is designed with the following
guidelines in mind:

* **Component-based architecture.** Quickly add new behaviors
* **Highly available and scalable.** Scale to very serious workloads
* **Fault tolerant.** Isolated processes avoid cascading failures
* **Recoverable.** Failures should be easy to diagnose, debug, and rectify
* **Open standards.** Be a reference implementation for a community-driven

Concepts
========

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   glossary

Modules reference
=================

Zaqar is composed of two layers:

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   transport
   storage/autoindex

The **transport drivers** are responsible for interacting with Zaqar clients.
Every query made by clients is processed by the transport layer, which is in
charge of passing this information to the backend and then returning the
response in a format understandable by the client.

The **storage drivers** are responsible for interacting with the storage
backends and, that way, store or retrieve the data coming from the transport
layer.

In order to keep these layers decoupled, we have established that
**checks should be performed in the appropriate layer**. In other words,
transport drivers must guarantee that the incoming data is well-formed and
storage drivers must enforce their data model stays consistent.

Setting up a development environment
====================================

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   devref/development.environment

Welcome new contributors
========================

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   welcome
   first_patch
   first_review


Running and writing tests
=========================

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   running_tests
   test_suite

Reviewing
=========

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   reviewer_guide

Running benchmark
=================

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   running_benchmark

Other resources
===============

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 3

   launchpad
   gerrit
   jenkins

Internal API reference
======================

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 3

   api/autoindex

Indices and tables
------------------

* :ref:`genindex`
* :ref:`modindex`
* :ref:`search`