by Antero Taivalsaari

March 19, 2009 - The World Wide Web is the most powerful medium for information sharing and distribution in the history of humankind. As such, it is not surprising that the use of the Web has spread to many new areas outside its original intended use, including the distribution of photographs, music, videos, and so on.

More recently, the Web has emerged as an important platform for software applications as well. Software applications that were previously written for specific operating systems, CPU architectures or devices, are now written for the Web, to be used from a web browser by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Web applications require no installation or manual upgrades, and they can be deployed instantly worldwide. This instant worldwide deployment aspect is incredibly powerful, and will dramatically change the way people develop, deploy and use software, allowing worldwide application development and instant deployment without middlemen or distributors.

In this report Sun Labs researcher Antero Taivalsaari discusses the future of web applications. A key observation in the paper is that web applications do not have to live by the same constraints that characterized the evolution of traditional desktop applications. The ability to dynamically publish, share, and mash up (combine) code and content available from countless web sites and developers all over the planet will open up entirely new possibilities for software development. This will lead to a new software development approach that can be referred to as mashware, or software as a mashup.

This report provides an introduction to mashware. It provides an overview of a number of emerging mashup development technologies and environments, including IBM Mashup Center, Microsoft Popfly and Yahoo Pipes. The report also summarizes the key technical challenges and obstacles that still remain in this exciting new area.