University of Washington Emerging Technology

Presentation

Presented by John Musser (Founder of Programmable Web and a great guy to talk with.)

John provided a well rounded presentation on enterprise mashups. Cleverly debunking the myths and focusing on the data and realities of enterprise mashups. He also gives an analysis of mashup tools and expected enterprise mashup future trends.

The Hype:

ZapThink’s 2008 SOA Forecast:

“The world of enterprise mashups will come into its own in 2008, and become what many people
are calling the “killer use-case” for SOA.”

The Surveys:

Source: Information Week, September 2007

I like this public access pie chart where it shows 43% of IT web applications are either developing or have deployed applications using data from publicly accessible web sites. I wonder if that meant both web pages and web services? With the trending towards RESTful APIs returning payloads that are XHTML and ATOM based, does making the difference between web pages and web services matter any longer?

What is a mashup?

Combines multiple web services into something new

Addresses a specific need

Developed quickly by an individual or small team

Rich user experience (optional)

I think these points are excellent in that our vision for ROA, which used to be SOA for the UW, hits upon our goal of serendipity and quick creation of innovative web applications. This is in contrast to our past designs where we focused mainly on long-living applications.

Here are some points that make looking at mashups different than the way we currently or used to see things.

Lightweight application combining data and services from multiple sources

Developed inside an enterprise

By either IT or business staff

Created in days not months

Uses a Web Oriented Architecture(WOA)

For the UW this would be “uses a Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA)”

Often uses internal + external web services

Done at data, logic and/or presentation layers

What makes mashups different?

See slide #10

Adapted from ProgrammableWeb.com Web2.0 Expo slides

What I like best about this matrix is that it gets to the heart of the same decisions and tradeoffs we made here at the UW; both to our webservices and application development strategy.

Web 2.0 is definitely coming into the enterprise and here is a list of those things:

Open APIs

SaaS: Software as a Service

RIA (Rich Internet Applications)

Dynamic scripting languages

Cloud computing

Widgets

Open Standards

The Long Tail of IT - a really good slide on how mashups address the long tail of IT which is characterized as:

Unmet business demand for IT

Ad-hoc, tactical solutions

Manual processes

See slide #19

I like this pie chart from Information Week, Sept 2007 which asks the question about how folks feel about non-IT staff developing their own mashups. Which for the record I believe is the right thing for the UW to do! Of course making sure we work through all the important challenges while we advance to that end state.

I like the comparison that Microsoft Excel is currently still the mashup tool of choice. While this new Web 2.0 era is more about web based accessibility of mashups as well as real time access to that information.

John also makes another comparison of mashups that makes sense. Enterprise mashups are focused on implementations that target a specific business problem. Making solutions much more agile vs our current monolithic systems which were created to meet global central processing. Now those systems are expected to solve targeted and quick business problems which it can’t. This of course results in business opportunity loss and frustration directed at many IT shops.

Web Oriented Architecture

John presents a new acronym, WOA, which he describes as Web Oriented Architecture however his description fits almost perfectly with Resource Oriented Architecture. Especially with the comment that WOA is a unified means to identify resources online.ROA is what we currently subscribe to here at the UW.

See slide #29 for data related to the percentage of open APIs by type. RESTful APIs rise to the top with 68% seen in the wild by ProgrammableWeb.

How will you build your mashup? Fundamental commonality: HTTP, REST, XML, RSS, Atom, Ajax, XHTML

List of mashup tools presented:

SnapLogic

Kapow Technologies

IBM Lotus Mashups

IBM Infosphere Mashup Hub

IBM WebSphere sMash

Top 4 enterprise mashup challenges:

1. Immature Marketplace - early adopter phase with lots of change
2. SLAs for APIs - lack of SLA as a barrier to adoption
3. Security - data access rights; lack of identity standards; compliance regulations
4. Data quality and trust - applies to both internal and external data

Mashup Advice for IT
1. Beware the hype, but don’t ignore
More opportunity than risk here, and it’s going to happen anyway…

2. Got SOA? Make it a mashup platform
Mashup-enable IT infrastructure: use open standards, expose services

3. Start simply
Small apps, pilots, evaluations

4. Think tools, both for IT and business
Tools to enable wider adoption, speed creation, enforce policy

5. Add governance as needed
Mashup-aware policies for security and external services

Trends to watch:

Open web technologies driving enterprise mashups

SOA + ROA (sorry I just could not write WOA here)

Rapid growth of enterprise mashups APIs and tools

SLAs beginning to appear:

Google Maps Premier (starts at $10K/yr)

Amazon’s new SLAs (Silver $100/month; Gold $400/month)

Impact assessment of Mashups in The Enterprise

eTech key take aways:

Our UW ROA strategy align strongly with the mashup environment that John has described for us.

We have focused much of our energy on building out core webservices; now we need to spend equal time understanding how to deliver a mashup infrastructure and build agile web applications that allow our UW businesses to meet business demand in real time.

Google App Engine

I was unable to find the presentation slides from Web 2.0 so here is something else I found that covers mostly the same thing.

Basics:

1. Google runs the web apps (just web apps only)
2. Handles the entire lifecycle of an app
3. App runs on Google Infrastructure

This is not a VM instance and not comparable to Amazon’s EC2; its just for web apps

This is an alternate to the traditional LAMP stack so instead you are using the same Google infrastructure that Google uses:

- GoogleIDs
- BigTable
- Google File System
- essentially you are using same building blocks as Google

NO batch cron jobs available

Scalable infrastructure
- Runs fault tolerant on both the web front end and persistence data store
- Automatic tuning of processing capabilities based on load
- Currently supports only Python. Google wants more feedback from community on what other programming languages they should support
- SDK is available so local development can emulate the Google platform. SDK is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows

Web based admin console provided

Scalable data store / persistence layer
- Called BigTable (this is not SQL)
- No relational databases here
- No joins on tables

There is Google SQL syntax to retrieve data called GQL almost identical to SQL however we didnt go through how it compared up with all the different CRUD operations in SQL.

Useful apis provided by the Google framework

1. Email Api - to send email
2. Http apis - to GET URIs - especially useful for calling webservices
3. Google Ids

No charge for technical preview however there is a quota on usage

When the service is ready for production use, then you pay for what you use only. Processing power and bandwidth will be charged on individual rates. The platform will automatically scale based on demand.

Pretty much everything about the platform is still being developed and of course they want the customers involved every step of the way. No date for when this will come out of technical preview.

YES, you can use GoogleIDs provided thru Google Apps for Edu or Domains. In fact you can sign up thru your own domain. I have done this for our test Google Apps for Education domain. I believe you can do this for team edition domains as well by going to http://appengine.google.com/a/ /. I am on a waiting list now.

Anyone know of a Python project on campus so we can do a trial study on this?

eTech Take Aways:

1. Lets try this out with a python project on campus to better understand Google’s hosting infrastructure.
2. Exploring outsourced application hosting with large vendors like Google and Amazon allows us to create more options and opportunities for our customers.

Presentation

Ryan Sarver – Director of Consumer Products (Skyhook Wireless/Loki)

This session was about introducing practical tools that allow developers to add location capabilities to a website or application.

Location adds a new level of extra meaning and metadata so you can push meaningful data to the user based on a person’s location. This will give your users another level of context to work with based on where they are.

Location data comes in different variations:
1. Lat and long
2. Polygon area
3. Street address
4. Street intersections
5. Area title = “south of market”

Due to privacy risks there are means of blurring location such as using general location data like “I am in Fremont” vs a street address.

Some showcased tools:

My.loki.com

Here is an example website which will detect your current location based on wifi location (mapped out wireless access points ) and allow you to share location with friends. This site and its associated browser plugins is based on the Skyhook wireless SDK. www.skyhookwireless.com

Fireball: www.fireballapp.com
At the Web2.0 Expo, attendees were given access to a new application still in development called Fireball.

Taken from the Fireball site:

“Fireball is a location-based mashup designed to find out where your friends are. Instead of creating Yet Another Social Network, forcing you to re-add all your friends (AGAIN), we just tie together the best tools out there (that you probably already use). This includes using Twitter (for messaging and your social/attention network), Upcoming (for event and place names) and Fire Eagle (for location queries and updates).”

The location input is through Twittering, so it requires a user to type in their location, while Loki only requires you to push a button to determine current location.

FireEagle.com a Yahoo! service

Taken from the FireEagle site:

“Fire Eagle is a system that brokers location information. It is designed to help users safely share information about their location with sites, services and people on the Internet.
The service has two major functions for users—it allows a user to update their location and then gives them full control of how and where they share that location. A user can perform these functions on the central site, but can also update or access their location data using any other authorized 3rd party application - on the web, on a desktop application or on a mobile device. Applications that access a user’s location information can then personalize their service accordingly.”

This system serves as repository for users to store location information. Applications are then developed against it to either query for location or input new location data. The system has tools which allow users to control application and data access to their own location data.

Geolocation Methods:

Triangulate
Determining position of an unknown object relative to known objects

• wifi (wireless access points - maps out wireless access points)
• gps (satellites - one meter)
• cell towers

Accuracy:
GPS - 1 meter
Wi-Fi - 20 meters
Cell Tower - 2000 meters

Here is a good link that describes the various location providers currently available.
http://www.locationaware.org/wiki/Location_providers

Here is a link to existing standards for location data
http://www.locationaware.org/wiki/Existing_Standards

Mobile Location APIs

- iPhone core location API
- WIFI, Cell tower
- Symbian S60 location api
- GPS, A-GPS
- J2ME JSR-179 (Java)
- GPS, device-specific

More info for developers

Skyhook SDK
www.skyhookwireless.com

Where Widgets
http://developer.where.com

Cell Tower Data:
- developer.yahoo.com/yrb/zonetag
- www.opencellid.org
- celldb.org

More ways to update your location:

* Get Dopplr to tell Fire Eagle the city you’re in
* Send your location to the Twitter user Firebot
* Install the Navizon client on your iPhone to update your location every few minutes
* Use ZoneTag on Nokia 60 phones to broadcast your location automatically

eTech TakeAways:

1. We can start exploring these new location aware technologies NOW and determine what works and doesn’t as it relates to the technology and more importantly privacy issues.

2. Start thinking about various possibilities here that would add real world value to our UW community.

3. Lets find a study problem that would be best served through location awareness and solve it.

Presentation Slides

Speaker: Brian Fling (Fling Media)

This was a 3-hour work shop given during the first day of the conference. This workshop goes thru the basics of mobile technology and explains the current and possible future mobile environment. The talk also included a healthy dose of iPhone development.

Brian takes us through the jargon map for the mobile landscape and further explains mobility using a layered diagram. See slide #56

Services

Applications

Application Frameworks

Operating Systems

Platforms

Handsets

Networks

Operators

A slide of the Top Network Operators. See slide #59

A slide of various GSM Mobile Networks and their speeds. See slide #63

A pie chart comparing various mobile devices. See slide #67

A table listing various mobile platforms and their descriptions such as Java ME, Palm, iPhone, etc… See slide #69

A table listing various mobile operating systems and their descriptions such as Symbian, Windows mobile, OS X, etc… See slide #71

A table listing various application frameworks and their descriptions such as BREW, Web, Flash lite, etc… See slide #73

An awesome video showing why companies are finding it hard to innovate with mobile phones due to government and industry restrictions. The video is taken during Jason Devitt’s (founder of Skydeck) appearance before the US congress on July 11th 2007.

Here are a couple quotes from Brian that I certainly agree with - “Mobile will revolutionize the way we gather and interact with information in the next two years.” & “Mobile has the potential to reach anybody through any medium”

Mobile 2.0 is used to describe the current and new advancements (evolution) with mobile phones and devices.

Brian offers 5 points to why the mobile device is unique as a computing platform.

1. First truly personal mass media
2. First always-on mass media
3. First always-carried mass media
4. Only mass media with a built in payment channel
5. Offers point of thought

See slide #106

An important mobility feature that is changing mobile usage is location awareness. Methods of triangulation to provide location data: wifi access points, gps, and cell towers.

Location awareness brings with it many opportunities to help bring a new level of context and value to users. How does knowing whether your customer is in close proximity to your office affect how your site and data is presented to the user?

A good slide on the mobile evolution based on types of phones. See slide #145

This slide shows the differences between Web 1.0 & Web 2.0. See slide #148

Good summary of Mobile 2.0. See slide #158

See slide #187 for a list of iPhone strengths

Types of iPhone Applications:

1. Productivity (eg. Calendar)
2. Utility (eg. Weather reports)
3. Immersive (eg. Use of accelerometer, physical movement of device)

A comparison of benefits between web apps vs iPhone apps. See slide #235

Brian’s suggestion: “Build Web Apps first. iPhone Apps second.”

A comparison between network speeds such as EDGE vs Wi-Fi. See slide #255

Brian shows off his Leaflets technology which he uses to showcase an iPhone web application and describe iPhone web application best practices. See slide #266

eTech key take aways:

1. The number of iPhone/iPodTouch devices on the UW campus should reinforce our development focus on Safari webkit applications.

2. Web applications for mobile devices will provide a new vehicle for UW data and information to reach our constituents around the world like never before. For example, we can tackle research which is taking place in developing countries where data connectivity is challenging.

3. Location awareness within mobile devices will help enhance the services we can bring to students, faculty, and researchers in every UW campus. A simple example is an interactive campus map on a mobile device which guides a student from one class to another in real time.

4. Taking pop quizzes to the next level, where timed quizzes can be given to students any time of the day.

Presentation slides

Speaker: Daniel Appelquist (Senior Technology Strategist - Vodafone)

Daniel predicts that within 5 years, the majority of Web usage worldwide will be mobile. Mobile application developers are increasingly choosing the web as a platform. This is helping break up closed carriers.

Developing countries are driving mobile usage due to the fact mobile phones are more accessible than traditional computers. Mobile phones are a powerful platforms because they are always close to the individual, almost always on, and people usually do not typically share their phone with others so it is a very personal and social device.

Mobile 2.0 is used as a term for describing the next wave of mobile advancements. Here is a sample list of these advancements:

SMS -> IM, mobile blogging
Java Games -> Connected Applications
Presence & Push-To-Talk -> VOIP applications
WAP sites -> Web sites that adapt for mobile browsers
WAP pus -> RSS Readers
Location based services -> Proximity and location-aware services
Content comsumption -> Content creation (e.g. mobile blogging)
Carrier/Operator chooses -> User chooses

Top 11 Mobile 2.0 Trends:

See slide #8

Why is Mobile Different?

See slide #10

Mobile Web Best Practices and Ajax

Start at slide #11

eTech key take aways:

The iPhone is currently the closest Mobile 2.0 device. In every mobility conference session that I attended at Web2.0, the iPhone is always mentioned

Location aware features in mobile devices are changing the way businesses interact with mobile users. Location aware features add a new level of context to both the web and mobile experience by understanding a person’s proximity and providing more value based on that data. An example is Ads or personalized data served based on location.

The mobile future is in web applications and widgets developed for the mobile phone

Browser standards for mobility are increasingly being applied to all major browsers

Everything is still evolving and will always continue to evolve

Many opportunities here for the UW to take advantage of this new mobile web. One simple example is the use of campus maps and location awareness to help navigate people around campus.