Too Soon for Definitive Standards?
W3C, others say there is work to be done on technologies that underlie mashups
April 15, 2007 —
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The world of mashups can be a chaotic one, with little structure and order when it comes to the methods that developers use to merge data from various sources. Though the nature of the beast seems to preclude the development of standards expressly for mashups, various technologies that can be integral pieces of mashup creation are being enhanced, and standardized when appropriate.
When asked if the World Wide Web Consortium is currently considering any particular standards for the creation of mashups, Lee Feigenbaum, chair of the W3C’s data access working group, said that it is more accurate to think of the organization’s efforts as a “continuum of technologies.” The vast majority of mashups, he said, are based off of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so those core technologies play a large part in their creation.
“The W3C doesn’t have a mashup activity or working group,” Feigenbaum said. “Instead, it has a variety of groups whose technologies could be used in certain cases for producing mashups. If you’re only dealing with XML data, XQuery might be the best way to unify that data. SPARQL [SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language] might be good for data from disparate sources. As far as the meat of the W3C mashup picture, I think it’s better to look at it as technologies all contributing to faster, more agile developments of mashups.”
STRUGGLING OVER STANDARDS
Dan Gisolfi, IBM’s executive IT architect for emerging Internet technologies, said he thinks that at this point in time, mashup technologies are too new for the creation of standards. “It’s similar to any other emerging technology, where you’re going to follow a curve,” Gisolfi said. “Up front, there’s a lot of innovation. And then the amount of innovation becomes confusing, so we’ll need some consolidation. Right now, I’m suggesting the need for consolidation isn’t necessarily there yet because there’s still a lot of innovation going on.”
Nonetheless, IBM has been pushing its Web 2.0-based mashup maker, QEDWiki, and Gisolfi appeared to be very high on its potential. QEDwiki is wiki-based, and can run in a Web browser without the need for special plug-ins. Mashup creators can create a wiki page and select from different widgets. Users can then mash rich content from different sources and work with the specific information they need. They then have the ability to send links to other people so that mashups can be shared.
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