Mash-ups and Interoperability

Under the section title Enabling Technologies: System Integration Architectures of the Yang et al. paper, mashups and plug-and-play techniques and codes are presented as a fairly simple but wonderful thing in a very positive light. Words such as “ideal”, “easily integrated”, “foundation” and “new” assist in creating this sentiment which to me, seems to downplay some of the serious issues of heterogeneity of components and interoperability. These issues are by no means solved but it is true some advances have been made in increasing interoperability between platforms and systems. One need only look at the multitude of APIs that can be plugged into a webpage to know some interoperability is taking place. Nonetheless, as discussed last class in regard to geovisualization, there remains a large amount of heterogeneity in data, in software and different GCIs. It cannot be forgotten or emphasized enough that regardless of how far we have come in managing some of this data, there will always be more of it in many forms and that new forms of data will continue to emerge.

 

-Outdoor Addict

 

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