February 2008: Get Ready for Mashup Madness!
Quote of the Month
“There are a few instances of brokers or Web service providers today, including
StrikeIron. These guys provide a single stop shopping and management mechanism
for those looking to consume those service. In other words, you sign up, find
the service you need, download the WSDL, and you're in business...Keep in mind
that these brokers are also similar to directory and governance systems we are
defining in SOAs today, however their existence on the Web means that they also
provide central sharing of services, service reviews and other centralized
information sharing, and the ability to support fail safe, scalability, and
continuous management through economies of scale. In other words, you're able
to leverage a service that somebody is always watching, and managing. That's
much more than you can say for traditional enterprise systems."
Dave Linthicum / Real World SOA in InfoWorld –How
SOA and the “New Web” are Married
Note from the President
What's New at StrikeIron
What's New in Web Services?
StrikeIron in the News:
StrikeIron Events:
Note from the President: Get ready for Mashups Madness!
StrikeIron’s March Mashup Contest, based on our live college basketball data
API, is in full swing and the innovating has begun. If you haven’t heard about
this, check it out at www.strikeiron.com/hoops
We are anxious to see what ideas emerge as a result of making data that has
traditionally been locked up or otherwise unavailable now easily accessible in
a 24x7 hosted environment over the Web that everyone can use. We have taken raw
data sources and have delivered easy-to-integrate Web Services APIs to make
this possible. In this particular case it is live college basketball scores,
schedules, and statistical data (and a whole lot more) that updates every 60
seconds. This is the foundation of Web 2.0 and SOA-based innovation.
So while the contest appeals to the competitive gene in us all and captures the
excitement of the NCAA March college basketball tournament, it is not really
about college basketball at all. Rather it is about how when translating these
concepts to other types of data, including business data, the same kind of
innovation can occur. Once you remove the data integration step, the complexity
of building applications, mashups, and Web sites around this data is
dramatically reduced, allowing new value creation to flourish within a much
larger audience.
For example, I quickly built the following mashup in Microsoft Excel using
StrikeIron’s SOA
Express for Excel (download for free) that tracks
schedules, the latest news, results, poll data (with Excel charting
capabilities), injuries, odds, and player statistics that change in real-time
as the data is refreshed utilizing eight different tabbed worksheets:
www.strikeiron.com/assets/soaworkbook/TSNNCAABasketballv1.zip.
Working with any Web service, it turns Excel in to a universal data consumption
client in an environment that most business people are already fairly familiar
and comfortable with. While it is far from the contest winner, it does
demonstrate the value, flexibility, ease-of-use, and innovation that can be
achieved when the ideas of data-as-a-service, a Web services delivery platform,
and easy consumption solutions are all pulled together.
We are looking forward to tracking the contest, seeing the innovation that will
occur, and crowning the eventual champions from each category.
Bob Brauer
President and CEO, StrikeIron
What's New at StrikeIron?
StrikeIron Announces Mashup Madness! Hoops Contest
Contest challenges developers to showcase their skills with live college
basketball data and win a flat screen TV (Hoops)
What's New in Web Services?
IPligence Geo IP Location
Geographic information such as IP Address ranges, IP Address Owner, latitude,
longitude, time zone, and a map representing the location, for a given IP
Address. (GEO IP)
StrikeIron in the News
Podcast: SOA and the New Web
Putting together assets and services from both inside and outside the firewall
and extend SOA (Podcast)
Real World SOA/David Linthicum: How SOA and the “New Web”
are Married
Think of the PC before the Web. While it did have value, the Web provided the
current content, and that made all the difference. The same with emerging Web.
(New
Web)
StrikeIron Events:
Web 2.0 Expo
Visit us in San Francisco (Web 2.0)