StrikeIron Blog

IBM Mashup Center Demonstration Showcases StrikeIron Web Services

Mashups, a key category of the Web 2.0 revolution, were envisioned several years ago as a relatively quick and easy way to build simple yet useful applications, some of which would serve as prototypes of future enterprise-scale applications. The thinking was that these mashups would be dreamed up, built, and quickly deployed by business users to meet immediate needs, but that they would be built using IT-approved components to ensure that governance and security policies were still being adhered to.

These Mashups, or "hybrid Web applications" use pre-built components that are typically in the form of XML-based Web services, API's, and data sources. New functionality then emerges utilizing two or more of these external components that typically go beyond the original intended use of those components. Sometimes these mashup applications have short shelf-lives, but a major benefit is that they can be built quickly, as soon as a need emerges.

This envisioned wave of mashups would ideally enable applications to be built with minimal interaction with the I.T. organization, decreasing the backlog of applications I.T. had to focus on while simultaneously providing the knowledge workers with more control over functionality of the applications they would ultimately be the users of, all the while living within the framework governed by the I.T. organization. This would ultimately be more beneficial for I.T. organizations as they could get more done faster.

However, the concept of "mashups" have taken awhile to become mainstream, largely because some of the mashup tools initially available to users were frail and light on capabilities, especially in the areas of adhering to governance and general usability.  It was also fairly difficult to bring in to a mashup the various shapes and sizes different external components could exist in. These factors have caused slower than envisioned adoption rates of mashup technology over the years.

Meanwhile, recognizing the advantages these concepts can bring an organization, IBM with its Mashup Center offering has quietly been solving many of these issues to make the concept of the mashup and all of its benefits a reality in today's enterprise.

To demonstrate this, IBM's jStart Emerging Technologies Team recently built a mashup application that utilizes several StrikeIron Web services. It demonstrates the kinds of creative applications that can rapidly be built with IBM's Mashup Center product, especially when utilizing external Web services like those that StrikeIron provides.

The application enables a call center representative to capture a sales lead from an incoming call and adds additional data about the lead by calling several data enrichment Web services provided by StrikeIron. It then sends the lead to the nearest sales representative or business partner for immediate action using either SMS Text Messaging or IVR Text-to-Voice call notification, also both provided by StrikeIron.

Because of the consistency of usage and behavior across all of StrikeIron's various Web services, they become an ideal collection of services to be used when building mashups, ultimately reducing service-related complexity from the mashup building process.

This mashup shows how easily outside components can serve as building blocks to be used to build an application with IBM's Mashup Center to suit the needs outlined by business users.

To walk through it step by step, you can visit John Feller's blog (of IBM) here: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/etech/entry/call_center_mashup_using_ibm_mashup_center_and_strikeiron_services7?lang=en

With IBM Mashup Center, organizations can unlock and transform enterprise, Web, personal, and departmental information into Mashup-ready, reusable building blocks, including information feeds and widgets. These assets can then be dynamically assembled, at-the-glass, into new applications that address daily business challenges. Speed of development is the key with mashups, and with Mashup Center you have the agility and flexibility to respond to changes in the business and new requirements that typically emerge. This agility in turn helps organizations reduce their application backlog and improve productivity by increasing the speed of application development and encourage reuse of existing assets, whether internal or external to the organization.

Also, if you would like to see a video of the demo application, you can see it here on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh-_7BqNKts

HTML5, Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX - What it Means for Data Providers

If you remember Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, Betamax vs VHS, and many of the other format wars, then you have a pretty good idea about what we are on the precipice of in the world of Web animation frameworks and browser standards.

A term often used for these Web animation frameworks is an RIA (Rich Internet Application) framework, a moniker coined to demonstrate that with animation, increased visual capabilities, sound, libraries of advanced visually-compelling controls, and other enhancements, Web sites and Web applications will become "richer" in experience, more captivating for the user, and therefore represent the future of the Web. an RIA is a term often used in conjunction with Web 2.0 and other terms that indicate where the Web is today versus its inception.

So how did we get to where we are in terms of RIA Web applications and Web sites?

First there was Flash, evolving from Macromedia and now Adobe, which is essentially a software plug-in for browsers that enables animations to exist on Web pages and then be viewed from browsers that have the Flash plug-in installed. Browsers typically do not have this capability out of the box, so when you first visit a Web site that uses Flash, you are prompted to download the Flash software plug-in automatically. From that period forward it is part of your browser, and you can henceforth view all Flash animations that exist on Websites. YouTube for example uses Flash to display its videos.

Just like PDFs as a standard for text-based documents, Adobe has been very successful with turning Flash into a Web browser animation standard. They currently claim that 98% of all browsers have Flash currently installed. This is good news for Web developers and Web site creators as they can rest assured that if they build a Flash animation in to their site, almost everyone that visits will be able to see it and there will be a great deal of consistency for the visitor regardless of browser.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft entered the game by developing its own Web animation framework called "Silverlight". Even the name is similar to Adobe's Flash. Perhaps Microsoft introduced Silverlight to continue to solidify the distribution of the .NET platform (Silverlight is now officially a subset of the .NET framework) and also to keep Internet Explorer strong and relevant (Internet Explorer 8 comes with Silverlight pre-installed, an advantage over Adobe). You can experience Silverlight using the Bing Maps application (you can toggle between the "classic" version and the recently out-of-beta Silverlight version).

One disadvantage of Silverlight (backed with patents, as is Adobe Flash) it seems is that Silverlight doesn't run on Linux browsers, although support has been "announced", and there is now a non-Microsoft open source project group entitled "Moonlight" that is working on an open source Linux version of Silverlight. Moonlight 2 was released less than 60 days ago.

Not to be outdone, Sun went to work on JavaFX, its own RIA framework, that naturally is available with Java IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) and JVMs (Java Virtual Machines, another software plug-in that allows Java applications to run both on desktops and within browsers). Not only does it have some technical advantages such as local disk access, but Java is also the most widely used development environment today. So, even though there is some uncertainty about all things Sun with the recent acquisition by Oracle, no doubt JavaFX-based RIAs with Java's broad base of distribution will still have a heck of a Web footprint and will have something to say during the standards battles ahead.

So is your browser starting to feel a little heavy with all of the plug-ins that will need to be installed?

Some members of the industry thought so too, and now we are all really starting to hear the rumblings of HTML5, the latest HTML standard that will have a lot of what these various RIA frameworks offer already built in, therefore reducing the need for these kinds of extra browser plug-ins. That's the goal anyway. Not shockingly, the HTML5 effort is being led by two of the other "big guys" Google and Apple, two companies with no real vested interest in these so-called proprietary frameworks such as Flash, Silverlight, or JavaFX being dominant.

HTML5, the next major revision of HTML contains some of the following capabilities:

 - provides many new element tags such as <time>, <audio> and <video>
 - canvas element for immediate mode 2D drawing
 - timed media playback
 - document editing
 - drag-and-drop

and several more RIA-like features.

Many browsers have already begun to support many of these HTML5 features. Internet Explorer 8 for example, with more than 20% browser market share, already supports much of the HTML5 standard.

The challenge here is that in addition to the RIA framework war, browser wars are also in full swing. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and others are all making market share headway into a once dominated segment of the industry. Some estimates currently have Internet Explorer at around 60% of market share (from 90% years ago), Firefox at 25%, and Safari and Chrome making significant advances in 2009 to the 5% range from 1% earlier in the year.

This fragmentation of browser market share, while good for competition, has its downside. In each case, browsers may have their own interpretation of how to treat various components of the HTML5 standard and for quite some time will only support various components of the standard (HTML5 isn't even complete yet). This will in turn cause Web developers and Web site creators a great deal of headache as they try to handle all the permutations of devices, browsers and RIA frameworks that a Web site visitor might possess. It certainly was easier to test Web sites before launch in a Flash-dominated world.

There is also substantial evidence that this standards war is heating up. The iPhone, and now the recently announced iPad do not support Adobe's Flash technology, instead opting for the HTML5 vision (and they certainly could have supported both). If the iPad reaches high levels of market penetration, which is far from certain, it could be a considerable blow to Adobe. After Steve Jobs recently characterized Adobe as "lazy", Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch fired back suggesting that iPad users will now have a crippled Web experience. There probably will be many more words to come on these fronts in 2010.

So while there seems to be a period of great uncertainty looming in Web standards, the next question is what does this mean for all of the commercial data folks and the API providers?

I believe that since data is at the heart of any application, RIAs and the ability to create richer, more compelling user experiences will cause more and more applications to be run from the Web rather than the desktop. This will drive more SAAS application market share versus traditional software applications, and hence the need for more data consumable via the Web (such as with SOAP, REST, etc.) that is a natural fit for these kinds of applications. Also, the increasing visual experiences that will emerge from these RIA frameworks will all be considerably data dependent. So while the the Web standard fragmentation is troubling, data companies won't need to bet on the winners as their offerings will continue to be universally accessible and necessary, regardless of the application, even though some additional protocols may need to be supported. In other words, businesses such as StrikeIron have a bright future indeed in an RIA world, as no matter how rich the interfaces, there will still be back-end needs for data and functionality such as address verification, sales tax rates, sending SMS, financial data, foreign exchange rates, and all of the rest.