Lets say I have a website with 1000 users online

website is mysql and php driven, has a personal messaging system

At the moment I have ajax refresh ever 5 minutes which pulls a php file which is used to check for new messages in the DB

I want to use lightsteamer so that when someone sends a message to a member, that member receives an alert instantly

How can lightsteamer accomplish this

Im assuming the alert must be sent down the pipe before it hits the database, as if in the database then will need to check the DB for new messages hence waste of time

Just looking for a bit of info on settings this up. I have lightsteamer installed on linux and the demos are working, its just a bit tricky when you arnt to hot on java
I think that in your case the simplest solution would be to have your PHP code directly send events to Lightstreamer Server through ARI (Adapter Remoting Infrastructure). In this case you wouldn't need to code anything in Java and to integrate PHP with Java.

In other words, you should develop a Remote Data Adapter in PHP, which can live within your web server. The picture below shows this architecture.



To achieve that, you should first become familiar with the typical workflow of a Data Adapter, by referring to section 4.2 of "General Concepts.pdf" and to the "Hello World" tutorial. Then, you can start developing your own remote PHP Data Adapter by working at TCP socket level and referring to "ARI Protocol.pdf" for the socket protocol documentation.

Hope that helps.
Thanks I will check into that, still very new to this so going to have to play around for a few weeks

Im glad it can be done though, thats a start!