What Technologies Is Google Wave Using?

Question

What are the technologies employed in building Google Wave?

Edit: I have moved and amalgamated the answers into an answer below, rather than here in the question where they were.

Saks

Answer 1

• Real-time editing - some kind of Ajax/Comet for server side calls.
• Version-control.
• Built in Google Web Toolkit (GWT).
  • GWT involves Java, Javascript, CSS, HTML.
• Custom built protocol. Wave protocol.
  • Uses the xmmp standard
• Rich text-editor.
• Language translation.
• Google Gears, for drag and drop (of files) functionality. Trying to get it into the HTML5 spec.

Saks

Answer 2

It's using HTML5 for the interface and XMPP (Jabber's protocol) for the communication stuff.

Jaclyn

Answer 3

The revolutionary part is Operational Transform. Based on the Jupiter collaborative system.

You may like to watch this video: Google I/O 2009 - Google Wave Under the hood

Excruciating

Answer 4

I understand that they use an Extension to the Jabber protocol for the federated wave servers.

The realtime editing is based on an algorithm sometimes called jupiter algorithm and described in this paper. More informations can be found on http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers

Paloma

Answer 5

I believe Google Wave is built on HTML5.

Gon

Which HTML5 technologies? - Offline storage. - Geolocation? - Canvas? - Multithreading/processes? – Saks

(One) better question may be: what technologies does the new version of GWT use/require. It looks like the demo runs on Chrome, Safari 4, and Firefox 3.5(?) so perhaps HTML 5 and canvas are baseline requirements. Will IE 8 work? – Unwept