An Evaluation of Mashup Technology

Abstract

Mashups are web applications developed using contents and services available on the web. Mashups provide a flexible and "easy-to-use" way for service composition on the Web. In this thesis we share the result of an evaluation of the mashup technology considering the two scenarios City Guide and Doctor's Appointment, both defined by the UbiCompForAll research project. The main focus has been on the evaluation of the service functionality provided by the mashup tools Yahoo! Pipes and Intel Mash Maker. We conclude that Yahoo! Pipes and Intel Mash Maker are not as suitable as a standalone solution for the two scenarios. Using either Yahoo! Pipes or Intel Mash Maker as a value-added service and extension to another platform, to provide additional web-based functionality, may be a solution for further work. The thesis also share the result of a usability test on Yahoo! Pipes, performed on four of the members of the UbiCompForAll research project and three master students at NTNU. The result from our usability test and earlier studies shows that Yahoo! Pipes require some basic programming knowledge and understanding of data formats/structures. Thus, Yahoo! Pipes is not as suitable as an end-user composition tool for average end-users of services as City Guide and Doctor's Appointment.