How exactly does the mashup process work? What does Presto really do? These are a couple of common newbie questions. I have had different explanations for this, but of late, I have narrowed down on the following elevator pitch (trust me, this textual explanation looks long, but I can explain really fast in person) that I have used successfully with other developers recently. So I thought I will share this with the community in case it helps others to understand the process and artifacts around enterprise mashups.

I found it easier to explain the whole mashup workflow using three terms: Mashables, Mashups and Shareables (OK, I confess, these may not be in the English Dictionary yet :-) ). [Read More...]

Mashups and Microsoft SharePoint Part 1.2: SharePoint Consuming Mashups using standard XML Web Part

This is the second article in a multi-part series about Mashups and Microsoft SharePoint.  You can read about the entire series at http://www.jackbe.com/enterprise-mashup/blog/mashing-sharepoint-introduction.

With a fairly basic knowledge of XSL, XPath and XSL Stylesheets, the SharePoint XML Web Part can provide a front-end for Presto Mashups. The XML Web part can actually be used to invoke any REST-like, XML based, non-SOAP Web Service, where the invocation request is encapsulated in a URI and the response is received as an XML document.

So prerequisites for the Presto Service are: [Read More...]

A Developer's Guide to Mashups and Microsoft SharePoint

SharePoint is Microsoft's platform for collaboration and document management.  It is widely used in organizations for sharing information with basic workflow and is typically a complement to existing content management systems, enterprise portals, and the like.

While SharePoint is able to support basic information sharing, it lacks dynamic mashup capabilities. We want to shed some light on mashing SharePoint rapidly and securely.

Let's first consider some of the questions you have been asking about mashups and SharePoint... [Read More...]

I often get asked about 'best practices' when implementing enterprise mashups.  So my compadres and I often write about tips, techniques, and guidelines, both here on the Mashup Developer Community and on our corporate blog.  And recently I came up with an easy way to remember some of the more important best practices.

I spent most of my last 2 weekends moving 11 cubic yards of mulch. For those of you who have never encountered such a beast, check out the picture (that's after 5+ hours of work). 

'Mulch Mountain', as I call it, is the equivalent of over 300 full wheel barrels of mulch. At ~20 pitch-forks loads per barrel, that's over 6,000 'bend and lifts'.  Yes, 6,000.  Yes, my back hurts.

So, during my suffering work, my mind started to wander.  And I had a thought: there are a lot of parallels in the best ways to mulch and mash... [Read More...]

Loraine Lawson from IT Business Edge put her money on Day 2 of our Free Enterprise Mashup Training, 'Mashups in Your Enterprise', to be the most notable and interesting session of all three training days. And I'm willing to double her bet based on the questions you asked during the presentation. [Read More...]