Mashups: a New Concept in Web Application Programming

In recent years, a new trend in Web application development, namely mashups, has evolved. Initially, mashups laid focus on mixing different data sources together, offering a quick and simple way to create situational business applications. The author's introduction tells what mashups are and what you can expect of them. A categorization helps to get a general idea of what types of mashups do exist, and how enterprises can take advantage of them. Furthermore, the book discusses relevant aspects, technologies most commonly used within mashups, and how they can be implemented. You will learn how to access the content through APIs, get to know Web data extraction methodologies, and will be introduced to tools for such extractions. Three available public mashup platforms (Yahoo! Pipes, MS Popfly and IBM's Mashup Starter Kit) are presented and discussed. The case study, a music mashup based on Apache Cocoon, provides an insight into concepts behind mashups, such as web scraping, data mashing and front-end development. This book is for developers or software architects, who want an overview of how to create mashups and their uses.