Posted 01/26/2010 - 07:20 by nzblue_fish
When I firsted started the journey to learn about mashups, I spent some time surfing the internet to find as many useful references to mashups as I could: what they were and how they could be used. One resource that I came across, was a book entitled "Mashup Patterns - Designs and Examples for the Modern Enterprise" by Michael Ogrinz. I have to confess I still haven't read the book, but it is on my "must have" list, somewhere very near the top. However the book has a companion site (http://www.mashuppatterns.com) which offers a few extracts from the book, including a list of 37 mashup patterns organised into 5 groups: Harvest, Enhance, Assemble, Manage and Test. You can read about each category and the suggestions on Michael's site or perhaps just buy the book like I will be doing.
Anyway, I liked Michael's list so much that I've decided to set myself the challenge of creating at least one usable mashup that fits with each one of the 37 suggested patterns. Some seem quite straightforward, while others I think will take a bit more research and may have to wait until I've read the book.
It might not seem a huge challenge, but combine that with too many years away from development and the need to upskill myself in all sorts of new technologies: javascript, emml, java and groovy ... oh the list seems endless, as does the stack of reference books I have at the moment ... it's going to be a steep learning curve.
I'm pleased that I can already tick off 2 on the list:
- Enhance/Feed Factory -where we combined news items scrapped from 3 leading industry related websites to create a single RSS feed. It makes it so much quicker to scan the latest news items in one place on our intranet, and
- Assemble/Content Aggregation - uses a SQL query to pull data from the news sections database on our intranet so users can see all the news in one place rather than have to visit separate parts of the intranet. A real time saver or at the least it enables staff to check the news in one access rather than not at all.
A good start, but 35 to go ...
Happy mashing folks,
Innes
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Hey Innes...
Just wanted to let you know that the ’37 Enterprise Mashups’ blog is now on eBizQ: http://www.ebizq.net/industrywatch/2455.html. It is also on the EbizQ homepage (at least, at the moment, although I expect this could change).
We think this is super cooooooooool!!
Keep up the involvement! And thank you from us at the MDC!
Chris Warner
Hi Innes,
Thanks for the kind words about Mashup Patterns, and good luck with your ambitious goal! I'd recommend starting out with the Harvest patterns. If you choose your solutions carefully, they should form the basis (Mashables, in Presto parlance) of many of the other patterns in the book.
I hope that you will share some of your experiences and thoughts regarding how easy or difficult you find the patterns to implement as you make your way though them. Were they affected by the complexity of the pattern itself, the underlying information sources, the products you used, or all three? One area I did not cover in the book (because I thought it would introduce a bias towards current tooling) is how easy or tough particular types of mashups can be. I look forward to reading more about your journey.
Mike