I've been spending my weekends cruising around looking for examples of mashups, which are now hot, but I'm pretty sure few enterprise architects understand them. A few blogs ago I covered the differences between non-visual and visual mashups, and perhaps now it's time to look for examples.

You may want to check out DataMashups.com, which not only provides a tool to create mashups but a few sample mashups as well, that exhibit elements of both types. What's unique about these samples is that a few are moving away from the typically "addresses with Google Maps" samples that are all over the place these days, to things that are a bit more complex and useful. For instance, using the REST API out of Amazon to locate books, and perhaps mash that up with your own inventory, or whatever application you can think of.

Although these are very primitive when you consider the complexities of enterprise applications, the real value here is understanding the potential applications of this notion, including what I see as the real key values:

Agility. Of course. Creating applications and re-creating applications to drive enterprise information requirements. Moreover, leveraging many SaaS delivered applications in this mix as well.

Cost. It's much cheaper to leverage applications and services that are pre-built, and many that are offered at little or no cost. Also, you'll need much less local infrastructure.

Coolness. This is really the destination for SOA, Web 2.0, application development, and information usage. Thus, you might as well get on board now...and you have to admit it's very cool.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on August 7, 2006 11:20 AM