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Web 2.0 Mashups Almost Ready For Enterprise
Dion Hinchcliffe, in a blog post over at ZDNet, talks about the increasing business value of 'Mashup' projects. Some of these, he believes, may soon or already be ready for use in an enterprise environment. He demonstrates one of these upcoming projects, showing off IBM's QEDWiki in a Flash demonstration. The software allows users to create their own mashups from canned widgets, turning data into simple applications with fairly straightforward functionality. From the article: "The motivations for mashups are quite different inside of organizations, where application backlogs and demand for more software that will improve collaboration and productivity are often rampant. If this state of affairs is true, far from having too much software, most enterprises don't have enough to satisfy demand, despite the prevalence of mountains of existing enterprise systems, many of which are underutilized. The arguments for letting users self-service themselves with end-user application tools and getting IT out of the critical path for the backlog of simpler applications are extensive." How important do you think 'self-made' software will be in the future?
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Several attempts have been made at this in the past. In many companies, there is one or two Excel uber-users (or even, gasp, actual developers), who are able to understand parts of the enterprise's accounting, ERP, CRM, etc. databases and make tools...er, workbooks, that facilitate some of the necessary analysis or other operational needs of the department they work in, even if it means "enter data from here in the app form X to this cell here", i.e., manual screen scraping.
The company I am contracting at is trying to do something like this with an enterprise rules engine by TIBCO. Others provide various kinds of APIs that hide the gory details of the database or application interface, whether it is SAS, SAP ABAPs, etc.
It might work in a general sense, but it will still involve developers at some point to bridge the gap between functional experts (i.e., accountants) and the application, in order to fit the application to the business, and not the other way around.
Yep, we see that every few years. Strangely enough, it coincides with the latest new "paradigm".
I blame Star Trek. People want technology to be magically easy to configure and re-purpose. But it isn't. Computers don't "think" like people do and it takes a lot of work for a person to think the way a computer does.
Being pretty much accurate for most of the data most of the time is what you get when the untrained person attempts it.
Please, let this horrid buzzword die. Right now. All we have to do is convince the Slashdot editors to stop injecting it into articles. Last time I turned around, "mashup" meant some kind of Frankenstein DJ set. Now it means the same thing as connecting software packages together by end users? WTF.
*** DRINK MORE COFFEE ***
"I blame Star Trek."
I don't.
"People want technology to be magically easy to configure and re-purpose. But it isn't."
Let's ignore the faction that benefits from the status-quo.
"Computers don't "think" like people do and it takes a lot of work for a person to think the way a computer does."
It's easier to change computers than it is to change people.
"Being pretty much accurate for most of the data most of the time is what you get when the untrained person attempts it."
They're usually better domain experts than the turf-protecting programmers.
I remember the whole justification for the expense of web services and the xml-ification of everything was the promise of doing just this. No more Com, OLE, COM+ etc where everyone must have MS Office installed to get things done. Software is available in any browser, any device any where at any time.
You make a public stateless web service. RSS feeds of content. Internet enabled APIs. Mashups are the logical result of being able to pull in data from anywhere, control it and use XSLT etc to change the layout.
I don't see this as any novel or amazing concept. It's the final result of a decade of hard work finally getting noticed now that the web standards have stabalized and the internet bubble popped and removed most of the random money chasers from the pool of talent.
"Mashup" is most possibly the worst word that has ever come out of the technology sector as a buzzword.
First it sounds like "an amalgamation of multiple different components into one" but when I look at all of the sites/services that are referred to as "mashups" none of them fit this description. QEDWiki is a wiki, it doesn't appear to be "a wiki with a calendar attached" and it certainly doesn't appear to be built from 10 different components or easily integrated.
the article mentions zillow, which is an online real estate directory.... It has no "mashy-ness" about it at all.
Anyway, its a stupid word that doesn't mean anything
"Web 2.0 Mashups Almost Ready For Enterprise"
:-(
What a disgusting, vapid headline
That is all.
No, let's look at cars. The heavy equipment that usually takes a new driver a few months to "master".
And yet tens of thousands of people are KILLED while operating these every year. And I'm not even talking about crippling injuries, non-crippling injuries or property damage.
The fact is that even when their LIFE IS AT RISK people fail to handle the technology they have correctly. Even after being trained on it.
So why would they spend more time and effort learning how to program effectively?
"The arguments for letting users self-service themselves with end-user application tools and getting IT out of the critical path for the backlog of simpler applications are extensive.""
And the arguments AGAINST it are very serious and extensive as well.
Look at all the crap Excel spreadsheet "systems" and badly-designed Access database "applications" that exist in every company.
This stuff is under no one's control except one or two employees. It is sometimes used for mission-critical decisions. And the reliability and accuracy of the application is not controlled by anybody, let alone the issue of whether proper backups, data vetting and security are being done in such "end user developed" applications.
This has proven to be bad news in the past for many companies, and will be proven so again, I suspect.
Applications that aren't that important for a business, such as applications that merely improve the productivity of an employee's personal use of their computer, aren't that bad. But applications that are important for the CORRECT performance of the employee's JOB should be developed by people that have some clue about the issues that surround application development (assuming such people exist in your IT department - which isn't always the case, unfortunately.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Deprived of the command line, lacking the ability to simply pipe information between processes, the web generation has rediscovered the simple fact that many tasks are best solved by letting the end user combine small, best-of-breed tools.
There is a reason that companies have an IT department. There is a reason that they hire computer experts. The simple fact of the matter is that every Tom Dick and Harry doesn't have the necessary skill set to develop and MAINTAIN their own applications. Companies need to ensure that they have data integrity and ensure that everyone is working with the same dataset. When you start giving users control over something as mission critical as data applications you are looking for a headache. At the end of the day, you are going to have a bunch of pissed off users and a bunch of pissed off IT guys. The users are going to be pissed because their applications break. The IT guys are going to be pissed because they are expected to support applications that they didn't even develop in the first place.
If you need to give users access to data, give them a copy of Crystal Reports and send them off to class to learn how to use it. I haven't come across a single situation where a non-technical person needed data out of any system that couldn't be presented to them with Crystal Reports.