SFIM stands for Standard Forum Interaction Modeling. The purose of the SFIM project is to create an ecosystem in which forums have a high level of interoperability. The idea is that any forum created using SFIM will have a well documented set of interactions that will be consistent. This way a forum administrator can port their interface manager from one forum manager software to another without having to also move data from one database to another. This way an android app developer can create a generic app that can be used to log into any SFIM forum, and a user can select any app targeting SFIM forums to access one or more of their favorite forums.
The very most important component of SFIM will be the Entity-Relationship Model, or ER Model, describing how databases using SFIM should be structured. This will incude as much description as possible of what the ER Model is trying to convey. The reason for this is that any implementation of SFIM will be based upon this ER Model, and can be thought of as an example of SFIM. Any implentations of SFIM that are part of the SFIM project are meant to be reference implemtations. These are not meant to be the official implementation, best implementation, or most popular implementation. They are meant to be examples of how things are done that are also usable directly. Potential users and developers are encouraged to reimplement any aspect of the referenece implementations as they see fit. However, they must keep in mind that they are advised to follow the ER Model as closely as possible so that it will be easier for other developers to make their components work together.
It is important that forum administrators choosing to switch from one forum management system to a SFIM management system be able to port their forum easily. For this reason the ER Model will be similar to other popular forum management systems.
The reference implementation Database Management System, or DBMS, will be written in SQL. The reason for this is that SQL is an extremely widespread language, known by many developers, designed to be as human readable as possible. However, certain web application programming frameworks have methods for creating and interacting with databases without ever writing a single line of SQL. This is part of the advantage of SFIM. A programmer is free to use any implementation of any component that they feel is best for their needs, including creating a new implementation of the entire stack.
The reference implementation of a web interface using SFIM will be written in Python using Pyramid.
Python is an extremely readable language that is known by a great many programmers. For many programmers, it was their first language. This means that it is known by an even larger number of programmers than perhaps just the programmers who use it.
Pyramid was designed to allow the programmer to choose how they want to store their database. This fits in extremely well with the goals of SFIM, especially for a reference implementation.
Django was second choice after Pyramid. The reason for this is that Django is an extremely well known framework, used by many developers. However, it does not allow for the same level of flexability that Pyramid does.
Many of these languages provide the programmer with the ability to do things with the minimum amount of effort coding. However, this can sometimes leave things confusing for other programmers, and can be especially difficult for new programmers. The reference implementations of SFIM are meant to be as clear as possible so that it is absolutely clear and explicit at all times what tasks the computer is performing.
Anyone who wants to create an implementation of the SFIM web interface in another framework or language than the reference implementation is encouraged to do so. If you think you can build a better implementation, you probably can.
There are plans to build a reference android app. The capabilites of this app would be to log into and interact with forums, and to allow multiple accounts on multiple sites to be logged in. Further details about the exact specifications of this android app will be given as the project grows and as the lead developer learns how to create apps for android.