Web 2.0 - The Introduction
I finally finished the first draft of my Web 2.0 article. This will go through some editing now, but I wanted to get the first part of this article out here ASAP - I’m going to publish the article in pieces since it’s not a simple cut and paste operation:
The Introduction
You’ve heard the term Web 2.0 and might be wondering exactly what it means to you and your business. You might be wondering what Web 2.0 includes. On the other hand, you might be right in the middle of it all, but noticing that more and more Oracle products seem to offer Web 2.0 entry points. Or maybe you’re not using Oracle technology for anything but your backend database. You might be wondering which other products should be under consideration? Which should be avoided? What’s a good entry point solution?
Perhaps you missed Web 1.5 altogether. If so, you might be wondering whether you can jump right into Web 2.0 or if you have to start at Web 1.5 first. If you missed Web 1.5, you’ll be happy to know that you can skip directly into the Web 2.0 world. If you’re looking for a competitive differentiation for your company, Web 2.0 will provide this for you. The primary advantage of a Web 2.0 application is that it’s VERY simple to use!
As the name implies, Web 2.0 is the next generation of the Web. Web 1.0 helped us take data and publish it to the Web – primarily via dynamic HTML pages. Web 2.0 goes beyond the user interface. One of the common issues with Web 1.0 offerings was that people (i.e. customers and vendors) wanted the content (i.e. the data), but not the presentation (i.e. HTML wrappers). So people effectively wrote screen scraping methods of extracting the data. We sometimes pondered the legal aspects of doing so with public data – such as stock quotes from Yahoo. With Web 1.5, Web Services replaced the need for screen scraping. It’s now time to move to the next level with Web 2.0. Concepts such as social networking and collaboration (i.e. blogs, RSS and wikis) are part of Web 2.0. Additionally mashups (portals) are an important component of Web 2.0. In other words, Web 2.0 takes the Web to a whole new level!
One of the primary issues in business today is that people are using email as the collaboration tool of choice. Much of what’s behind Web 2.0 is taking collaboration to a whole new level. This evolution doesn’t mean that you’re going to sit in more meetings or communicate remotely using a suite of collaboration software. Rather, Web 2.0 delivers an entirely new platform of real-world applications that will allow your employees and customers to share information in a much more cost-effective method. Keep in mind that Web 2.0 is not a tool – it’s a platform. Most of the tools and concepts that comprise the Web 2.0 platform originated in the open source world. These tools have changed the way that people communicate inside and outside of companies.
The concepts in Web 2.0 aren’t new concepts, but they are becoming mainstream. It’s interesting to note that Web 2.0 is very similar in concept to what Forrester Research called Transactive Content in a white paper that was published 10 years ago – yes, the Forrester report was released at the 1997 Forrester Forum!
Hopefully you’ve seen a Web Application and thought, “wow that takes the Web to a whole new level.” Now imagine if your entire business revolved around an entirely new level of collaboration capabilities. The visual component of a Web 2.0 application often looks like a traditional client/server application or a standalone desktop application. In other words, Web 2.0 provides a desktop-like user interface. Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access looks like Outlook that is running standalone on your desktop or laptop. Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) looks like a standalone application running on your laptop, yet it’s a browser-based application. Enter an address in Google Maps and you’ll visually see a map of the address’ location. You can zoom in and out, drag and drop the map, get a street view, view traffic information, see a satellite view, and so much more. Another impressive Web 2.0 site is the Cyberhomes site (http://www.cyberhomes.com), which provides an attractive user interface with informative graphics and other Web 2.0 functionality. Flickr and NetFlix are some other familiar names in the Web 2.0 realm of user interfaces.
Many companies offer the backend Web 2.0 components that you can embed into your own application. These backend services are called Web Services. Without scraping HTML for data, you can make “their data” appear on your site as if the data is coming from your own databases. You can pull data together from a number of different companies’ data into one consolidated site. When you pull together data from numerous (i.e. two or more) companies, this aggregation is often called a mashup or a composite application. Google, eBay, Amazon, and Zillow, for example, provide publically available Web Services, and many such services are available for free. If you’re interested in reading more about Web Services, there are several articles and presentations in the reference section at the end of this paper.
Those of us in the technology business sometimes get lost in the marketing white papers and do not know where to go to get the “truth”. This article is meant to be your “truth article” on Web 2.0.
In this paper, we’ll address some of Web 2.0 concepts that might be less understood. You’ll find this paper of interest if you do not understand how Web 2.0 applies to myriad of development environments that tout their Web 2.0 capabilities such as Oracle’s Application Express (Apex), Ruby, Java, .NET, PHP and more. If you’re wondering where each of these components fit into the Web 2.0 picture, this paper will be of interest to you. For example, you’ll get answers to questions like “what is Ruby, why would I want to use it?” and questions like “What skill set do I need to use it, how hard is it?”First we’ll cover the components (i.e. what makes up a Web 2.0 application environment) and provide some examples of how others are using Web 2.0. Hopefully, these examples will inspire you to brainstorm about how you can use Web 2.0 technology for your company or customers. We’ll then explore a variety of Oracle-based Web 2.0 development platform choices that are available.
blog, collaboration, rss, web 2.0, wiki
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