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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?
I'm not going to ax for extra credit or anything but, I wrote mashups in the 80's. FTA:
I would claim this specific notion (mashups) not only originated from the enterprise and trickled into internet consciousness, enterprise "mashups" existed many years ago. I know, I wrote them. It was (or at least we called it) surround technology.
We took vital pieces of different applications and wrote wrappers which allowed users with very simple interfaces to access more data more accurately more quickly. One example was a service order writing routine for small business that routinely took over 30 minutes... using our "mashup", we accessed the necessary enterprise applications and melded into a single app presentation and shortened the 30 minute process to less than 5.
I could go on, there were at least three other major applications we wrote (small team of 2, sometimes 3), that were "mashups". The advent of browser technology simply gave us another presentation tool, the notion and mechanics of mashing was still there.
I've played with Google "mashups", and Amazon "mashups", they're really nothing new.
There was a (don't know if they're still there) a Strategic Computing Consortium based in Boston, Ma, and they were huge advocates of surround technology and not only taught techniques and reasons for approaching solutions this way (I won't go into it -- it was a six-week class). And they provided and sold tools and consulting for putting these new applications together... the CEO (I believe) was John Donovan, author of a few college texts on OSes, and another major contributor was Stewart Madnick, one of the original authors of CMS (IBM's Conversational Monitoring System).
I'm won't claim they were the "founders" of mashups, but what they espoused and taught was mashup technology, and they were teaching it in 1986 (that's when I attended the consortium). The more things change, the more they stay the same.
(Also, as an aside, the article implies this new magic allows for "easy" creation of new applications. This is hardly so. All the care and due diligence of putting an application are still required. The effort can still be significant... There is certainly time saved if a team leverages existing critical applications but to toss this out as magical and easy for any end user community to leverage is probably glib and misleading.)
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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.
"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?
Has anyone actually watched the flash demo? Sadly, I have wasted a good ten minutes of my life that I will now never get back watching it. In doing so - I took notes on two terms that I found interesting:
Situational Application: Come on people, WHAT fucking application on the planet is NOT situational? I've NEVER used an application that was NOT situational - be it a game (entertainment), word processor (solving a business need), or anything else for that matter.
My other favorite:
Data driven application: As opposed to what?!? A bullshit driven application? Ah yes, that is officially MY new buzzword: Bullshit driven application. You heard it here first folks....