Application framework with demand-driven mashup for selective browsing

Abstract

This paper proposes a mashup framework for creating flexible mashup applications in which the user can selectively browse through mashup items. Our framework provides a data management engine for on-demand data generation, and GUI components called widgets that can be used to browse through mashed-up data selectively. The application developer has to only prepare a mashup relation specifying the web service combinations and widget configurations specifying how to display the mashed-up data. On the basis of these configurations, widgets monitor user interactions and requests data from the data management engine that processes the demand-driven creation of mashed-up data. To enable selective browsing, a table widget, for instance, allows selection of columns to be displayed, provides a limited view with scroll bars, and filtering facilities. Our framework also offers a mechanism for widget coordination where a widget can change the display target according to states or events of other widgets. We introduce a sample application for tour planning using five cooperative widgets, and discuss the usability and performance advantages of our framework.