Learning about Powering your Map Mashup

As you may already know, many people resonate with mapping features within a Mashup. This pattern is just part of the enterprise mashup value proposition as there are many ways to visualize data and its value. With that being said, the key part of enterprise mashups using a map is the critical data powering the map. For example, what are you mapping? How do you figure out what to map for your users or customers? How can this be done efficiently with the data you have? Mapping context needs to be driven by YOUR information and not just what Google or other vendors provides. I just came across a couple of posting that may trigger your interest if you are doing any mapping mashups and are looking for more intelligent means to power the map. Follow the links below to find out more about the value of location based data and how you can leverage your database to power your Enterprise Mashups.

Location, Location, Location!
Chat with the Lab

Enjoy!

Chris

When have Hands on Labs been REALLY fun? Check out IOD EMEA.

Recall your college/university days when you lived on coffee, lacked sleep and were wondering why you are in a lab room at 11:59 pm. Then you awake for have a colleague tap you on the shoulder. You are greeted with a chuckle and later you find out “QWERTY” is imprinted on your forehead from your keyboard pillow. Ah the good ole days – or were they?

Despite these type of memories, the hands on labs are very popular at Information on Demand so you want to sign up early. In particular, I have been involved with the Hands on Lab at IOD 2008 which premiered the lab currently titled “Enterprise Mashups - Revolutionize How User Access Information and Maximize your SOA Re-Use”. On several occasions while proctoring the lab, I was pulled aside by students / practitioners and specifically told – “This lab is really fun. Thanks for putting it together”. In the lab you will find how you can accelerate the ROI on your Information on Demand and SOA investments.

If you are attending IOD EMEA, take some time to have fun and learn about Enterprise Mashups.

If you want to see the type of thing you will be doing check out the Customer Insight mashup demo. Hope to see you there!

Day 3 at IOD

Good Day from IOD

IOD is picking up the pace with a great beach party. The fireworks at the show were bigger than most Canadian “Canada Day” fireworks. I was surprised to be so close to the actual fireworks launch area which added interesting dimension to the show.

Yesterday, I was in the “Trusted Business Information and Web2.0 Initiatives” session. I thought I would share a term used in this session: “Situation Awareness”. In this talk Tom Deutsch explained this notion.

“Organizations want to sense changes in the business environment better and respond more quickly. Situation awareness means knowing what is going on so that you can decide what to do.”

The concept is describing the willingness to address individual business challenges with situational applications. The business domain expertise is owned by these individuals who know how they need to consume the information. This challenge can be daunting as the natural thing to do for IT is to “broad brush” the problem which really does not address the real goal. Tom proceeds to suggest the need to provide trusted information in a secure, governable manner with Enterprise Mashups to address these types of applications. This approach leverage resources in line of business while reduce application backlogs. For more information on Enterprise Mashup check out IBM Mashup Center.

I have to now head off to my session on “Maximizing Data Web Services” now. Hope to see you there.

Good News for folks who Missed IOD in Vegas.

Good Morning. I hope you all have managed to survive the Halloween phenomenon and avoided getting “egged” this week. I have some good news for folks that could not get to IBM’s Information On Demand (IOD) in Las Vegas last week to be part of the launch of DB2 Version 9.5 (code name Viper 2). Grant Hutchison and I are planning on taking you through the new features within DB2 Version 9.5 in the “What’s new for Viper 2 for Developers”. In addition to DB2, you will find out about the new direction for Developer Workbench. There are some fresh new features as it relates to ease-of-use for data centric application developers discussed in this webcast. Join Us!

Information On Demand 2007 - Vegas

Sorry for the delay in my blog. I am back from IOD 2007 and I am all Vegas’ed out! Yes - I think "Vegas" should be a verb as this point (after 9 days of being there). As I had closed the Developer Den, I took a step back to snapshot the moment. “Exhausted!” is the best word for it; over 51 great sessions from the speakers. I did however feel a slight remorse that it had to end. There were many positive comments from the sessions within the Developer Den.

I must say "thank you" for the contributions from the speakers – great job. The speakers challenged the audience with new ideas ranging from Mash-ups, Web Services, cool XML and SQL content, and a new Java persistence technology in pureQuery to name a few. The Developer Den had it all which made the pace quicker than last year. We managed to find a way to give away IBM Data Studio, DB2 Viper 2 (DB2 Version 9.5) preview and the IDS Developer Edition all of which were hot off the presses.

I won’t go into new features of Viper 2 (DB2 version 9.5) for Developers as you will find more about that on November 7th Webcast titled “What is new for Viper 2 for Developers”

The Developer Den had a few of sessions on Mash-ups which were well attended. The Info 2.0 (a new Mash-up technology vision) was included in discussion in the Developer Den which complimented Business track at IOD and demos in the Exhibit Hall. From what I can tell customers’ are interested in the value proposition of the Info 2.0 vision which really makes me excited. Mash-ups are definitely on the radar for many companies as they are trying to figure out the landscape of Mash-ups for their environment. The latest edition of DB2 Magazine provides an insightful article on the Info 2.0 vision featuring comments from Anant Jhingran and Arvind Krishna. Additionally, this article provides tips on how to “brush up” on these technologies. The Info 2.0 momentum continues to grow from previous announcements on the IBM Mash-up Starter Toolkit on alphaWorks.

The IBM Data Studio also had a fair bit of content within the Developer Den which is very complimentary to the Info 2.0 vision. IBM Data Studio makes it easier for Application DBAs to produce data-centric Web Services which would be more easily consumable for Info 2.0 and in effect broadens the reach of Information on Demand. Check out the press release on IBM Data Studio. Many were interested in learning how to get started with IBM Data Studio as this session had standing room only. Additionally, IBM Data Studio ties nicely in with Rational products and Rational Data Architect.

Looking forward to next year.

Geeking Around

I have been on the road a fair bit and hence lacking real data. But recently have had a chance to run into to some very cool technology in September. I have been to:

· Web 2.0 Goes to Work from IBM developerWorks in Raleigh
· VSLive (New York)
· Web 2.0 Goes to Work from IBM developerWorks in Austin
· AjaxWorld (Santa Clara)

In my travels recently I have seen some very cool Ajax technology. The two notables demos/topics:

· Work going on with openAjax Alliance with AjaxHub and being able to search for an Ajax widget and pull it into your mashup via drag and drop. While AjaxWorld was relatively quiet – this was cool. You may also see this technology at ZendCon next week and IBM Information on Demand the following week.
· I was involved with a demo that published a Web Service from the Web 2.0 Starter Toolkit for IBM DB2 and then consumed it into what is called DAMIA on IBM alphaWorks (within minutes). The DAMIA technology will soon have a revision check out the news next week. I hope to have a write up on it very soon. I will post a url when the update occurs.


I will report to soon on my next couple of weeks at ZendCon and IBM Information On Demand.

Again, if you are a IBM Data Server technology person, check out the developer Den at IOD particularly TDN 2630 Developing with pureXML: A panel discussion. Get real life experience developing with best in breed XML data management.

Check it out.

Information on Demand 2007

Hi All,

This year I am excited to say that the Developer Den at Information on Demand 2007 in Las Vegas is going to be pretty cool for Information Developers, Architects, Application DBAs alike. We are adding IQ to the Mandalay Bay. The den is aggresive with content ranging from cobol, Java, C#, Ruby, Python, XML, PHP, Web 2.0, AJAX, SOA, Web Services, data modelling, Developer Tools and hmmm of course SQL.

The cool thing in the Den is the attendees have an opportunity to drive into the content they really want. We are making this interactive, collaborative which means a real exchange of information.

While the presenters have to prepare for their topic like any other talk which takes a fair bit of time, there is an upside to the presenters. They will be learning from others. Most talks will include a few subject matter experts. We will all be sharing, learning and geeking out!

We will also be providing an developing with pureXML panel where we can learn from experience. Yet to be finalized.

The den will have an option to just sit and relax and maybe fit in tutorial.

You can enroll as well. Not that we are all that formal :) See ya there.