Mashup Ecosystems: Integrating Web Resources on Desktop and Mobile Devices

Arto Salminen

    Research output: Book/ReportDoctoral thesisCollection of Articles

    1212 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    The Web is increasingly used as an application platform, and recent development of it has introduced software ecosystems where different actors collaborate. This collaboration is international from day one, and it evolves and grows rapidly. In web ecosystems applications are provided as services, and interdependencies between ecosystem parts can vary from very strong and obvious to loose and recondite. Mashups -- web application hybrids that combine resources from different services into an integrated system that has increased value from user perspective -- are exploiting services of the Web and creating ecosystems where end-users, mashup authors, and service providers collaborate. The term "resources" is used here in a broad sense, and it can refer to user's local data, infinite content of the Web, and even executable code. This dissertation presents mashups as a new breed of web applications that are intended for parsing the web content into an easily accessed form on both regular desktop computers as well as on mobile devices. Constantly evolving web technologies and new web services open up unforeseen possibilities for mashup development. However, developing mashups with current methods and tools for existing deployment environments is challenging. First, the Web as an application platform faces numerous shortcomings, second, web application development practices in general are still immature, and third, development of mashups has additional requirements that need to be addressed. In addition, mobility sets even more challenges for mashup authoring. This dissertation describes and addresses numerous issues regarding mashup ecosystems and client-side mashup development. To achieve this, we have implemented technical research artifacts including mashup ecosystems and different kinds of mashup compositions. The artifacts are developed with numerous runtime environments and tools and targeted at different end-user platforms. This has allowed us to evaluate methods, tools, and practises used during the implementation. As result, this dissertation identifies the fundamental challenges of mashup ecosystems and describes how service providers and mashup ecosystem authors can address these challenges in practice. In addition, example implementation of a specialized multimedia mashup ecosystem for mobile devices is described. To address mashup development issues, this dissertation introduces practical guidelines and a reference architecture that can be applied when mashups are created with traditional web development tools. Moreover, environments that can be used on mobile devices to create mashups that have access to both web and local resources are introduced. Finally, a novel approach to web software development -- creating software as a mashup -- is introduced, and a realization of such concept is described.
    Translated title of the contributionMashup Ecosystems: Integrating Web Resources on Desktop and Mobile Devices
    Original languageEnglish
    PublisherTampere University of Technology
    Number of pages126
    ISBN (Electronic)978-952-15-3128-6
    ISBN (Print)978-952-15-3022-7
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2013
    Publication typeG5 Doctoral dissertation (articles)

    Publication series

    NameTampere University of Technology. Publication
    PublisherTampere University of Technology
    Volume1116
    ISSN (Print)1459-2045

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