this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Privacy
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How...do you think chat systems with storage are supposed to work? They store data. In a database
What specific fields are shared by matrix but not xmpp?
The main difference is that in Matrix, a chat's history and media is stored indefinitely on every participating server, while on XMPP it's only the duty of the one "hosting" it. And to my understanding, in 1-to-1 chats, the server doesn't even retain the messages after delivering them, since there's a separate module for "syncing" the history between devices (that you can set the retention time for).
Yes in a local database, not a distributed one.
The main difference is that XMPP (like most other federated systems) is based on passing messages, so if a new server joins a chat, it gets send messages from that point onwards.
In Matrix that is different. When a new server joins a chat it exchanges the entire database for that chat, and for DAG consistency reasons this means all the metadata since the chat was first created, often years ago.