{"id":223,"date":"2007-02-26T10:33:50","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T18:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=223"},"modified":"2007-02-26T10:33:50","modified_gmt":"2007-02-26T18:33:50","slug":"saasdaas-data-sources-powering-mashups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/saasdaas-data-sources-powering-mashups\/","title":{"rendered":"SaaS\/DaaS: Data Sources Powering Mashups"},"content":{"rendered":"

SaaS<\/a> (Software as a Service) are hosted on-demand browser-based applications.\u00a0 Parallel to SaaS is something I’m calling DaaS (Data as a Service), a trend that is rapidly evolving.\u00a0 DaaS combines elements of SaaS and SOA and it is the force behind on-line data mashups<\/a>.\u00a0 SaaS tends towards the visual, while DaaS\u00a0focuses more on the\u00a0non-visual.<\/p>\n

While SaaS applications tend to be transplanted web cousins of long-familiar thick-client applications like CRM and ERP, DaaS are SOA<\/a>-like data sources, acting like on-line databases,\u00a0available to be consumed by both applications\u00a0and other data sources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Toolkits for mashing up data services are proliferating, simplifying the process of merging and massaging on-line data sets.\u00a0 Yahoo! Pipes, QEDWiki, and Kapow Technologies are three examples.\u00a0 Swivel’s<\/a> on-line data analytics with a social bent is another interesting twist on how the interest in\u00a0on-line data is growing.<\/p>\n

Yahoo!’s pipes<\/a> allows RSS data feeds to be re-combined in unique ways.\u00a0 A somewhat geeky interface allows designers to layout a data composite flow that connects and processes the XML of incoming RSS and Atom data feeds.\u00a0 The name ‘Pipes’ comes from the UNIX command-line ability to funnel input and output data back and forth between processes.\u00a0 Since being released over the last few weeks,\u00a0Pipes has\u00a0gotten considerable buzz<\/a> — at one point it was 5th on Technorati’s<\/a> list of top searches.\u00a0 Tim O’Reilly is calling<\/a> Pipes “a milestone in the history of the internet.”<\/p>\n

IBM’s QEDWiki<\/a> is a toolkit for creating simple mashups for use in browsers.\u00a0 It’s smart, but it is currently only available in a controlled hosted environment by IBM.\u00a0 It runs on a LAMP stack written in PHP5 and uses an MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture and AJAX to allow designers to quickly layout web pages using widgets and data feeds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kapow Technologies<\/a> sells Mashup Server software.\u00a0 The Kapow server product distinguishes between three kinds of mashups:<\/p>\n