Frequently Asked Questions¶

Frequently Asked Questions

General
Legal

General¶

What is RPC?

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is a messaging pattern involving peers of three roles:

Caller
Callee
Dealer

A Caller issues calls to remote procedures by providing the procedure URI and any arguments for the call. The Callee will execute the procedure using the supplied arguments to the call and return the result of the call to the Caller.

Callees register procedures they provide with Dealers. Callers initiate procedure calls first to Dealers. Dealers route calls incoming from Callers to Callees implementing the procedure called, and route call results back from Callees to Callers.

The Caller and Callee will usually run application code, while the Dealer works as a generic router for remote procedure calls decoupling Callers and Callees.

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What is PubSub?

Publish & Subscribe (PubSub) is a messaging pattern involving peers of three roles:

Publisher
Subscriber
Broker

A Publishers publishes events to topics by providing the topic URI and any payload for the event. Subscribers of the topic will receive the event together with the event payload.

Subscribers subscribe to topics they are interested in with Brokers. Publishers initiate publication first at Brokers. Brokers route events incoming from Publishers to Subscribers that are subscribed to respective topics.

The Publisher and Subscriber will usually run application code, while the Broker works as a generic router for events decoupling Publishers from Subscribers.

Read more: Publish / Subscribe Systems: Design and Principles, by Sasu Tarkoma.

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Why RPC and PubSub in one protocol?

Imagine the following situation: an application frontend wants to perform some action on an application backend. The frontend also wants to get notified when another frontend performs the respective action on the backend.

For example, in a Web application for managing service tickets, a frontend might perform the action “create new ticket”, and get notified via events of “new ticket created”.

A natural approach to realize above would use RPC for performing actions, and PubSub for notifications.

With the service ticket Web app, the frontend would subscribe to the topic “OnTicketCreated”, and perform it’s actions by calling “createTicket”. The backends implementation of “createTicket” would not only perform the action of creating a new ticket, but also publish a event on the topic “OnTicketCreated” with the details of the new ticket.

Now, a protocol suitable for realizing above will naturally need to provide both RPC and PubSub messaging patterns. WAMP was designed exactly with above in mind, so it provides you with a unified protocol for both RPC and PubSub.

For more about the reasoning behind WAMP, see this explanation.

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Why is it called WAMP and how do I use it?

WAMP is an acronym, and the term “Web Application Messaging Protocol” is a quite precise description of what the protocol provides.

WAMP is pronounced /wa:mp/, as in swamp or chomp.

Note that there is another technology also abbreviated WAMP: the Web technology stack “Windows + Apache + MySQL + PHP”. I.e. Wikipedia has a corresponding disambiguation page.

Because of this potential ambiguity, here is what we recommend for authors/implementors:

Use “WAMP” in text and speech
The first occurrence in text should read: “WAMP (Web Application Messaging Protocol)”
Add the hashtag/keyword “wampws” to the contents metadata

And here is what we recommend for users:

Use the terms “wamp” and “protocol” combined when using Web search engines
Use the hashtag/keyword “wampws” when search on Web platform like Twitter or StackOverflow

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What is WebSocket?

WebSocket is a protocol providing full-dupley communcations channels over a single TCP connection. It started out in the Web world, where it was created to replace things like Comet, and to allow true bi-directional, low-latency connections between browser and server. It’s standardized by the IETF and the W3C. Usage is not limited to the browser, with implementations available for all major programming languages. For more details see this introductory blog post.

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Is WebSocket necessary for WAMP?

WAMP started out as the WebSocket Application Messaging Protocol. WebSocket is still the preferred transport in many cases, but the transport layer is fully decoupled. Any bi-directional, reliable, message-based and ordered transport works. Transports like Unix Domain Sockets or Unix Pipes are being used in implementations.

Additionally, a transport for WAMP transports can be implemented on top of other transports which lack some of the requirements, e.g. using longpoll bi-directionality can be built on top of HTTP.

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Legal¶

What is the legal status of WAMP?

WAMP is free - both as in beer and as in speech. Do with it what you like. If WAMP fills your needs as it is, then the easiest thing is to just use it without any changes. The more compatible implementations, the better for interoperability. If your needs require modifications, or you want to start your own development based on WAMP, then you are also free to do so.

Whatever you do with WAMP - an announcement on the mailing list is always welcome.

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Are there any requirements if I use WAMP for my project?

WAMP is free to use for anybody, be it as part of an open source or a commercial project. There are no strings attached here, no licenses to pay, and no known other intellectual property (such as patents).

If you do use WAMP for your project, then both a mention of this somewhere in your project, and an announcement on the mailing list would be welcome.

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Why is WAMP trademarked?

The WAMP word- and design mark are trademarked as a way to ensure that only proper use is made of them. This is especially the case in regard to assurances regarding compatibility. A trademark policy detailing correct use is in the works. For now, and for a quick overview of the base principles of the trademark policy, see the following question.

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Who can use the WAMP word mark or the WAMP design mark?

The fact that WAMP is a word mark does not prevent factual use. If you
e.g. announced that you were working on a WAMP implementation, or
discussed details of your implementation work, or recommended this
website, these are all, naturally, entirely unproblematic uses.
For any use of the word mark which could imply a direct endorsement,
or other official connection with the WAMP project, or when in doubt,
please get in contact with typedef int GmbH. The same goes for any use
of the design mark (i.e. the WAMP logo at the top of the project
page).
We will take a look as quickly as possible, and try to arrange a
license if this should be necessary. (And a license does not need to
be a big deal.)

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What does the CC copyright on this website mean?

The threshold for using WAMP should be as low as possible. This includes the documentation for what you are doing. The CC BY license simply means that you are free to use any materials on this website (with the exception of the WAMP word mark or WAMP design mark) for your project. You can copy & paste or edit anything you think useful to for e.g. your own project website or your documentation. This applies irrespective of whether your project is commercial or non-commercial.

The only requirement is that you attribute this use. In an internet context, this is most easily done by providing something like ‘some materials copied/adapted from’ + a link to the WAMP website.

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