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In recent years, mashup has emerged as a rapid and light-weight development approach for creating distributed Web applications. The advent of easy-to-use, dynamic programming and scripting techniques (e.g. PHP, AJAX, etc.), increasingly open APIs, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), dedicated frameworks and environments (eg. Facebook API Platform, Yahoo Pipes) and the wide availability of free, syndicated content (eg RSS) has provided myriad opportunities for people to create mashup-based Web applications in ways unprecedented to traditional software development methods. Mashups can bring data and functionality together in different ways and for different purposes. Many would argue that their greatest potential is for addressing transient problems for specific groups of users in dynamically changing business, social or political contexts. Mashups can be created by people, who may or may not be skilled in programming, to test out ‘self-service’ whenever needed through integrating heterogeneous information across the boundaries of different organizations over the Web. The implication of such an end-user development approach is far-reaching and hence deserves extensive scientific investigation. However, beyond all the hype, studies of the actual development and use of mashups for delivering business, social or political value are extraordinarily rare. While previous studies have focused on the technical side of constructing the Mashups infrastructure, little has been reported to demonstrate the real value or identify the problems, practicalities and pitfalls of their construction. Essentially, we need to understand how mashups emerge and change, succeed or fail, in settings where people, policies, systems, and data are intertwined with each other, forming a complex yet dynamic system. Among many research challenges, a list of questions that are yet to be addressed by researchers are:
- Who makes mashups?
- Why do mashups succeed or fail?
- Are useful mashups really quick to develop?
- Is it better to develop a lot of low fidelity mashups or a few well engineered ones?
- How do communities of users emerge?
- How is the design of mashups participatory?
- What is the life cycle of a mashup?
- What business or social environments are condusive to mashup creation?
- What happens when bugs emerge in mashups?
- What happens when there are competing mashups to do the same job?
To answer these questions, a dual-focused approach that investigates both social and technical aspects of mashups is crucial. The aim of this workshop is thus to bring together academic researchers, industry practitioners and open source community participants for reporting research findings, sharing practical experiences, and highlighting research challenges and future directions in both the social and technical aspects of mashups. Intended topics may include but are not limited to:
- Mashup usability, adoption, and diffusion
- Mashup and organizational behavior
- Collaborative activities and their coordination supported by mashups
- Mashup and knowledge management
- Analysis of mashup applications including enterprise mashups, eWorkspace mashups, eResearch mashups, eLearning mashups, eBusiness mashups, etc.
- Mashup case studies and experience report
- Mashup application development methodology
- Process modeling in mashups and formal specifications
- Responsibility modeling in mashups
- Dependability in mashups
- Mashup middleware, supporting run-time and open source
- Security, trust, and privacy issues in mashups
- Social networks and mashups
- Mashup ecosystems
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Research