Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Jul. 4, 2007

Overall, Google's new Mashup Editor is the latest online development platform to appear, and it seems to be gaining traction rapidly.

Mashup Editor is a tool for creating hosted JavaScript applications. However, unlike previous competing services such as Microsoft's PopFly and Yahoo Pipes, Mashup Editor is more of a barebones solution, leaving the graphical front-ends almost non-existent.

Launched at Google's recent Developer Day, it's taken a while for the beta test invites to make their way outside the GooglePlex.

The service isn't just a development tool for mashups, it's also the new showcase for Google's own XML-based declarative Internet programming language, fully compliant with all the latest Web 2.0 buzzwords, along with a hosting platform that takes advantage of the Google Base APIs to give you a place to store and manage data.

With Mashup Editor, applications are published on the googlemashups.com domain – so you'll need to use i-Frames or some similar techniques to embed them in your sites and services.

SaaS (Software as a Service) is one of 2007's biggest trends. It's one that's also moving away from simple applications to whole hosted development platforms. So what's the Mashup Editor like?

Like most Google applications, the user interface is relatively simple and browser-based. Once you've logged in you'll find a tabbed window with an editor, a feed browser, a test area and a complete list of currently available Google applications.

The editor itself is better than most online code editors, with syntax highlighting and a tool for managing specific projects. The feed browser lets you see how Google's ATOM data format works with existing RSS feeds, as well as examining data stored in Google Base.

External information is treated as data feeds, and these are all converted to ATOM. This gets around one of the perennial problems of mashup development, as there's only one data format to work with.

Overall, the standardised format also means that the declarative tags used to work with data are consistent and relatively simple to understand. You can also work with Google's own Google Base by writing to your application's own feed – and using what Google calls "stripes" to manage your data, with each stripe being equivalent to a level in a hierarchical database.

Above all, your data doesn't have to be open to all (!) and you can utilize your users' Google IDs to manage access to information – which leads us to suspect that the platform will become part of Google's suite of hosted business tools in the very near future.

The big difference between Google's offering and its competitors' is simply Google Base. Persistence is a key element often missing from mashups, and unless you're willing to run your own database or subscribe to Salesforce.com or Netsuite, it's one that's going to remain extremely rare, at least according to some observers.

So far, it's been difficult to see a real and practical use for Google Base, and it looks like the Mashup Editor platform could be just the push that Google's online database needs.

While most applications can be created using standard JavaScript and the Google Mashup Editor tags, Google has also given its platform a JavaScript API. This gives you access to the application object, which lets you access any element in an application. Other options mean you can programmatically set data sources and manage data filters.

Also, the JavaScript API is comprehensive, and has a lot of similarities to existing Google APIs – and some cases acts as a wrapper to some of the more familiar API features.

Most mashup development is in the old favourites: CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Google's own XML tags are used to handle links to user interface elements, data sources, and feeds, as well as providing event handling and application flow control.

There are even attributes that can be added to existing HTML. One repeat gives you a simple loop, walking through the current data set and populating the HTML with the results.

It's a very practical method of filling up HTML tables. If you've worked with PHP you'll find data handling syntax quite familiar. Google's tags actually share a lot of similarities with PHP and other tag-based web development tools – so if you're already using PHP to develop web applications, you shouldn't find Google's new tag language hard to grasp.

XML developers will also find the language easy to learn, as its more advanced query features are based on X-PATH.

So far, hosted development platforms are the latest SaaS trend, and Google's arrival on the scene was widely expected. Like its earlier forays into the development world, the Google Mashup Editor is a no frills, barebones experience.

However, and like its earlier forays, it's also surprisingly easy to use and it can really deliver results quicky, efficiently and most of all, consistently.

Once code has been developed and debugged, you can use the 'Sandbox' to test your applications before naming them and publishing them to the googlemashups.com domain or as a gadget for use on the iGoogle portal.

With today's so many hosted development tools hitting the market all at once, successful implementations need to have their own niches.

Microsoft's Popfly is targeting the developer who doesn't know they're a developer, while Yahoo Pipes offer transformation and proxy services to developers who want to use multiple data sources in a single mashup.

So what exactly is the niche Google is specifically targeting here?

There may not be the same range of inputs as Popfly, or the flexibility of Pipes, but Google Mashup Editor's strength lies in its persistent storage. It is storage which gives Google Mashup Editor its real edge over its competing services.

With Google's Base service, we're more inclined to compare it to Salesforce.com's APEX platform than to the other consumer mashup platforms.

It will be interesting to see just how it can be used with Salesforce.com's platform, in light of the two companies' relationship.

As many people know already, some of Google's beta products never go into production, while others spend months and even years before they become real members of the Google family.

But with a solid beta and a definite niche, the Google Mashup Editor looks likely to graduate very quickly indeed.

All it really needs to succeed is the ability to include applications on your very own domain, with tools to simplify including them on your sites.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

    This article was featured on Business 5.0.

Source: The Register