“One simple example of a mashup is an aggregated Sales application that [...]]]> In his post, Michael Hiatt defines the basics of mashups, linked data, and the semantic web in very understandable terms. He also explains some of the challenges and projections for these concepts. I particularly like his example of a simple enterprise mashup:

“One simple example of a mashup is an aggregated Sales application that integrates CRM and financial data with functionality from the Web and corporate backend data. This example mashup would employ real-time information, streaming content, and Web services to form a coordinated application using all of these data sources. Integrated sales information for the traveling sales person could be available from their smart phone or laptop. I imagine this sample application to include these integrated features:

• Streams real-time Web information of financial and customer relationship management (CRM) data from NetSuite or Salesforce.com, combining it with online maps to visually identify, locate and categorize customers for each geographical location. Using Google Maps or Mapquest APIs, each customer site appears on the map and allows the sales person to drill down using the map paradigm to identify customer sites to expose new sales or possible upsell opportunities.
• Background information and Request for Information (RFI) documents could be generated partly using semantically rich content from DBpedia, the semantically structured content from Wikipedia. Integrated and updated glossary definitions of domain vernacular, references to partners and competitors could come together as competitive analysis documents. Prospective customers could read marketing evaluations combined with general reference content, and links to trusted independent blogger opinions, all from a single document.
• Internal, proprietary customer data about installed products, contracts, and upsell possibilities can be integrated with the maps, reference information, and sales database to provide personalized content for customers.”

Adobe AIR [...]]]> The Windows desktop is as some say, “the ocean in which we swim.” The Mac desktop is small, but very elegant. The Linux desktop is a whole new thrill for those of us who don’t mind tweaking a few lower-level configurations. Where is the common ground among these strikingly different beasts? Adobe AIR.

Adobe AIR makes good on the write-once-run-anywhere promise that Java once had for the desktop and it does it very powerfully. The Adobe AIR runtime installs and executes apps written in ActionScript and MXML. This automatically opened it up to a vast base of Flash developers. The secret sauce for Adobe AIR is the sophistication that it offers to desktop apps executing in a virtual machine. Some might argue that AIR applications offer more to the desktop than the native languages of the OS. If you have not experienced the ease in which Adobe AIR permits you to write very powerful apps for all major desktops, I encourage you to do so.

It is shipping in print and digital form at: I am proud to announce the launch of my new book, “Mashups: Strategies for the Modern Enterprise.”

It is shipping in print and digital form at: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321591869.

It will be available on amazon.com on May 15, 2009. The book was a very interesting project that opened my eyes to the vast number of possibilities and challenges presented by a mashup architecture in an enterprise environment. I look forward to conversations about the book and mashup development in all forms.

In the not so distant past, a command-line-interface using procedural programming was the environment [...]]]> If history proves to offer a glimpse of the future, perhaps we might find that event-driven programming is soon to revolutionize web-based computing. Consider history.

In the not so distant past, a command-line-interface using procedural programming was the environment for most user-oriented software. Note the following illustration:

This implied that user interactions were limited and predictable. As it became apparent that this implication was far from being correct and device drivers adopted common standards, event-based programming became possible. This led to the revolution of GUI-based desktops and event dispatching of GUI-based events. All of the sudden, real-time events were being exposed to the user and the user could now interact with the system as the events happened. This sounds innocent enough at first, but this was revolutionary to those who were there and remember when the Mac presented you with an instant dialog showing the contents of a disk as it was inserted rather than requiring you to insert a disk, mount a volume, then query for content.

Ahhh, the good life of GUI and event-based computing. No longer did a developer have to try to predict every step a user would take. Now, all a developer had to do was write a monstrous event loop, including a huge switch statement, and monopolize system resources as each event was handled, as illustrated below:

Sometimes developers were nice enough to share time with other processes, but not always. Then Microsoft Windows and other GUI environments came along and took the event loop out of the hands of the developer and required the developer to only respond to the events of interest, noted below:

What a revolution!

Web-based applications appear to be following a similar path. From simple request/reponse interactions to the quagmire of state-machines, back-button-nightmares, and browser inconsistencies, Web applications are finally turning the corner to the point of becoming responsive systems that present events to users as the events happen.

Ajax frameworks with push-based technologies such as HTTP-streaming and Comet might just be the (r)evolution that makes Web history.