Robots – The Building Blocks of a Mashup
http://openkapow.com
Mashups are web-based applications that aggregate visual interfaces (eg;Google maps), business logic, or data, from other web applications or sites and recombine these components as required to meet a specific purpose or business need. In openkapow, mashups are built around the concept of software Robots. These Robots are the building blocks of a mashup and execute specific tasks related to clipping of site content, aggregation of data, or the creation or consumption of REST or SOAP-based web services or RSS feeds.
Developers who belong to the openkapow community will have access to RoboMaker, an intuitive and powerful visual scripting environment to create Robots. All Robots developed by the openkapow community will be accessible through the Robot Gallery, a common repository on the openkapow site, where they can easily be reused by other, either as a standalone component, or in the context of a full mashup.
A Robot contains instructions on how to interface to one or more source applications. Object models define the format for input and output from Robots. The visual design environment provided by RoboMaker provides a very intuitive, but powerful interface for connecting to business logic and data, using existing web API’s, or wrapping these components with web API’s where needed. Using openkapow, developers can quickly and easily create Robots and mashups, working in their preferred scripting environment, including Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java, or .NET
What is a Clip?
An openkapow Web Clip is a type of Robot which allows a developer to collect data or visual content from any web site. A Clip can be fine or coursed grain, ranging from a single visual element on a web page, to a full clip of one or more pages. Clip’s can be easily integrated into any mashup and can even incorporate login or authentication mechanisms that are part of the underlying site the clip is sourced from. For more information on how clips work, go to Creating a basic Web Clip robot
What is a REST Robot?
In addition to data or visual content that can be collected by clipping, mashups can also incorporate business logic from any web based application. However, you will often find cases where the business logic you are targeting for your mashup lacks SOAP-based web services interfaces and is not published as a web service. To get around this problem, RoboMaker builds REST-based Robots for you, wrapping business logic in the target application to create a REST web service that can then be incorporated into a mashup. For more information on how REST Robots work, go to Creating a basic REST robot.
What is an RSS Robot?
RSS or ATOM feeds are a mechanism that web sites offer to “push” data and content to subscribers of their feed. An example of an RSS feed in a mashup would be a website that has a scrolling window of current news headlines from leading wire services and publications who allow users to subscribe to RSS feeds from their site. RoboMaker makes it easy to create RSS Robots, providing your mashup with a level of interactivity and rich user experience that has come to be associated with web 2.0 applications. For more information on how RSS Robots work, go to Creating a basic RSS robot that reads from Digg
Where can I get more help?
Openkapow.com is a community with many active and experienced users willing to share they experiences and knowledge of using RoboMaker to build robots and Mashups. We encourage you to explore the community forums where you can find discussions on advanced techniques and ideas, design best practices and general discussions on Robots and Mashups.
Interactive Marketing 