PushNotify: Push server application

Abstract

Push technology has evolved to a great extent since its inception and there have been many additions of new features to the available solutions, in terms of reliability, performance and new standards. In this paper, we propose an application to push data in real time which enables bidirectional flow of data and which is independent of any particular publisher/subscriber. The aim of this work is to develop a push server application for students/faculty for accessing study material, to keep track of last minute notices, and other important announcements, in real time from a central file/data server of the university. Usually, the file systems are heavily guarded by firewalls and accessing them from a remote location poses problems, our application solves this problem and allows secure access while maintaining the integrity with university policies. Server application is called PushNotify which is based on publish/subscribe model and is independent, which enables it to be easily integrated with any file server of any university and with any communication client, to achieve the paradigm, "any publisher, any subscriber". Communication client for subscribers to receive notifications or alerts can be web browser extension or mobile device application.