May 2007: Data Services Need Solutions
Quote of the Month:
“Indeed, companies are now realizing that it's often more practical to buy or
borrow functionality than to build it. Rather than implementing and maintaining
the vertical applications themselves, companies can now leverage existing
functionality provided by the vendors of those products.
A classic
example is Google's publicly available Web API services, which enable developers
to enhance any application with the ability to search billions of Web pages. A
new niche market of sites such as StrikeIron, which is a sort of an eBay for Web
Services, is slowly evolving, enabling companies to discover and buy access to
services to leverage in their own applications.”
–
SOA World: The Impact
of SOA and Web Services on the IT Industry by Tugdual Grall, Dan Hynes, Pyounguk
Cho
Note from the President
What’s New at StrikeIron?
What Can StrikeIron Do For You?
What’s New in Web Services?
Note from the President:
One of the things that we have learned from the digital music world is not
only is it important to have consistency in content (including format, behavior,
and business model), but it is also equally important to have a "player" to
essentially provide a "solution" for the content. After all, where would iTunes
be without the iPod? In fact, either the iPod or iTunes alone would be difficult
to use and probably have no where near the adoption that we witness today. The
two need each other to have true applicability for the masses. In other words,
the masses need a solution.
We understand this at StrikeIron, and believe the same is true in the Web
services world, especially with data services. True, many developers can take
the Web services APIs we provide and build their own "iPods", but usually only
after having used another version of an "iPod" created by someone else to start
from. This enables a foundation for building a better or customized version of a
"content player" for Web services because someone can actually see how the data
can be used.
To demonstrate this, we have created several implementations of "players" for
our data services content. These have been made available to serve as both a
solutions for a given Web service that can be used as user interfaces to access
data, but also as a starting point or model for other "players" that utilize the
live data or functionality that the Web service provides.
Some examples available on our site include:
Our partners are also building several "players" utilizing Web services from
StrikeIron including companies like IBM, BEA, crmFusion, Ratchetsoft, Solica,
RingLead and c360. Each of these are technology-specific "players" that utilize
data content from StrikeIron to provide a greater solution, and therefore much
more accessible by end users.
As you can imagine, with SOA, RIAs, widgets, Flex, Ajax, Apex, Silverlight
and everything else evolving before our eyes, the proliferation of "players" is
at a very early stage. Each of these will be major drivers of live data services
from companies like StrikeIron.
Bob Brauer
President and CEO, StrikeIron
What’s New at StrikeIron?
StrikeIron Survey Reveals Finding Quality Data is the
Biggest Challenge faced by Companies building Enterprise Mashups
Web
2.0 companies cite not only quality of data, but also finding relevant data as
key issues they face when integrating live data. <survey>
Industry Veterans Join StrikeIron Executive
Team
Addition of New Executives Adds to Company’s Forward Momentum
in the Emerging Data as a Service Field. <execs>
StrikeIron is hiring!
Join our team as
StrikeIron continues to lead the industry in Data as a Service. Visit our career
page to see our openings in Development, and Support! <careers>
What Can StrikeIron Do For You?
Data Services & Sample Code for salesforce.com
Mashups
StrikeIron Data Services & Flex make the best Salesforce
S-Control Mashups. <salesforce>
Download the Flex2 S-Control Sample
Code
This sample code uses Strikeiron US Address Verification Data
Service and the Flex Toolkit for Salesforce to transform any address into a
standard US Postal Service address. <S-control>
Demo code for integrating MapQuest Maps into
applications.
StrikeIron has created demo code that gives you
step-by-step process for integrating MapQuest Maps into applications. <MapQuest>
What’s New in Web Services?
D&B Business Prospect with Linkage
Get
business prospect information including corporate family relationships <D&B>
Mapquest Basic Mapping
Basic Mapping Web
Service makes it easy to add mapping capabilities to your website or
application. <Mapping>