Enterprise Mashups: The Web 2.0 mix master
ImageEnterprise Mashups - instant, infinitely customisable web applications - are being hailed by some as the future of the Web and the natural result of the Web 2.0 ethos.
IBM’s chief technical officer Emerging Internet Technologies, David Boloker is an acknowledged expert on Enterprise Mashups and is part of an IBM team developing the technology and was in New Zealand this week speaking at the Emerging Web Technologies and Trends Conference in Auckland.
Talking to m-net, Boloker was hesitant about making predictions: “I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do know that when something changes in business world, something else will develop to fill the void or need created.”
Enterprise Mashup technology is one such development, he says. “Put simply, Enterprise Mashups are all about integrating different data resources to form different or new applications.”
Google Maps is a good example of a Mashup, where users take the data, add their own and produce something unique. “There is a New Zealand and Australia bike trail Mashup based on Google Maps that is very good,” he says, “and real estate agents have also used Google maps.”
Those are static Mashups, he says. Dynamic Mashups, use information that is regularly updated. For example, Boloker said he might like to create a personal commuting website that showed train timetables and stations on his normal route to work, the nearest coffee shops and also informed him of disruptions or delays as they occur.
Working on the concept, IBM’s Alphaworks Services has released QEDWiki, a browser-based assembly canvas used to create simple Mashups: “It changes who is doing the programming,” says Boloker.
According to the IBM’s own website : “QEDWiki provides Web application developers with a flexible and extensible framework to enable do-it-yourself rapid prototyping. Business users can quickly prototype and build ad hoc applications without depending on software engineers. And QEDWiki provides mash-up enablers (programmers) with a framework for building reusable, tag-based commands. These commands (or widgets) can then be used by business users who wish to create their own Web applications.”
“QED means that different data or applications do not have to speak the same language,” says Boloker. “Different things come in different forms, so QED looks at the common properties.” [Source: Ken Lewis / m-net]
