Web 2.0 A Strategic Analysis
Team: Chris Gerrard, Hamid Hadi Sichani, Max Pruger, Gia Wood, Pradyot Rai Fall, 2005; Strategic IT Management
1
We b
History of the Web Vannevar Bush
In his
July, 1945 “As We May Think” manage the explosion of article
in
The Atlantic Monthly wrote of the need for new ways to
knowledge
that was even then threatening to overwhelm the ability of professional to keep pace with developments in their
areas of interest. He described the necessity to provide access to large bodies of separate pieces of information and proposed a mechanism for
connecting the pieces followed
to one another into
“trails” that could be
to track the information associations.
2
Web
history… In
1989 Tim Berners-Lee
“proposed that a global hypertext space be created in which any network-accessible
1990 first WorlDwidEweb browser
information could be refered to by a single "Universal Document Identifier" (UDI). In
hypertext server
he wrote the
and an editor named “
”. A simple
for
hypertext document written by Nicola Pellow was also released, creating what would become the World Wide Web (WWW).
This would have been remarkable enough in and of itself, but the real
breakthrough
publication URL HTML
was the
of the specifications HTTP everyone create their own Web servers, pages, sites, and browsers of the enabling technologies – UDI (since changed to
, on the Web server, allowing
),
, and
who wanted to take part in the new way of sharing information to jump in
and
, leveraging the strength of the idea. …
….This was Web 1.0 3
Web
philosophy …
“
The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information . Its universality is essential: the fact that a
hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which
That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together. – Sir Tim Berner-Lee we work and play and socialize.
”
4
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is not “about� technology Web 2.0
; rather, it builds upon the Web 1.0 foundation by
incorporating old and new technologies, techniques, and concepts of information creation, distribution, and access into a
much richer information universe ways previously unknown unanticipated
where the value of information can be tapped in
, and in many ways
. This paper examines
the elements that make up Web 2.0, considers their benefits, and proposes ways in which the modern information organization can further its strategic goals by embracing the Web 2.0 principles and practices.
emergence of Web 2.0 progression of innovation technology for novel purposes The foundation technologies of Web 2.0 are the same as those of Web 1.0. The taken place through the coupling of technology with
has
in the use of the
. As an example, the creation of Web forms in 1993[1] enabled the
RESTful approach to information systems architecture by providing the ability to send parameterized information to the Web server in a request; Ward Cunningham took advantage of this
first Wiki in 1995 community collaborate on building their body of common knowledge so that a
ability to create the
of like-minded people could truly
.
5
Web 2.0
Web 2.0… information easy to create connect locate combine into novel forms unintentional connectedness creation of “new” knowledge flexibility is a hallmark of Web 2.0. The heart of Web 2.0 is the concept that
together in meaningful ways, easy to that reveal
the
should be
, easy to
when it is relevant or interesting, and easy to
and thus permit
. These principles are realized in a variety of ways;
6
Web 2.0
creating information created in variety of ways variety of formats Web 2.0 concept of information is “it’s all the same” accessible through the mechanisms of the Web Information in Web 2.0 can be
wider
a wide
, and contained in an even
, ranging from the straightforward HTML page to complex proprietary-format documents to
dynamic data retrieved from databases in another dimension. In
the
– information is information, as long as it is , including the newer
mechanisms described below.
7
Web 2.0
connecting information Vannevar Bush
associative indexing Tim Berners-Lee embedded links HTML Web 2.0 external mechanisms connecting previously disconnected items highly dynamic and organic articulated the concept of “
�, the process of
tying two things together so that any item may be caused to select another. information together via
extended the concept of connectedness by incorporating
together
provided the means to link
declared in
.
has embraced and
for
. These range from passive and internal to
. The following sections describe the mechanisms at work in each
context.
8
Web 2.0
accessing information The value of information exists only in its usage browsing surfing Vannevar Bush’s trails other ways purely human purely automated
.
There are multiple ways in which the information held within Web 2.0 can be found and retrieved. The classic web is the concept of following
laid down by a pioneer who has been
through the information before you and laid down the markers to follow. There are to the
or
, from the
. Again, each following section will describe the relevant information access
mechanisms. Beginning with the ability to incorporate information gathering through the use of forms, following the RESTful architectural patterns, through the emergence of Wikis and their true collaboration model of information development, to Weblogs/Blogs, coupled with RSS and email for disseminating information to interested parties, to social networks and their impact on the collaborative development of meaning, ‌, through to Web Services and their SOA cousin providing the larger scale, more formal approach to component-based application development.
9
Web 2.0
REST – Foundation of the Web Representational State Transfer (REST) is an
distributed hypermedia systems Roy Fielding doctoral dissertation about the web written by
architectural style
for
like the world wide web. The term originated in a 2000
, one of the principal authors of the HTTP protocol specification,
and has quickly passed into widespread use in the networking community. While REST originally referred to a collection of architectural principles (described below), people now often use the term in a looser sense to describe any
simple web-based interface
that uses XML and HTTP without the extra abstractions of
MEP-based approaches like the web services SOAP protocol. Strictly speaking, it is possible (though not common) to design web service systems in accordance with Fielding's REST architectural style, and it is possible to design simple XML+HTTP interfaces in accordance with the RPC style, so these two different uses of REST cause some confusion in technical discussions. Systems that follow Fielding's REST principles are often referred to as RESTful; REST's most zealous advocates call themselves RESTafarians.
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Web 2.0
REST - Principles REST's proponents argue that the web has enjoyed the scalability and growth that it has as a result of a
A
few key design principles:
stateless client/server protocol
: each
HTTP message contains all the information necessary to
understand the request. As a result, neither the client nor the server needs to remember any communication-state between messages. In practice, however, many HTTP-based applications use cookies and other devices to maintain session state (some of those practices, like URL-rewriting, are not RESTful).A set of
well-defined operations
that apply to all pieces of information (called resources):
HTTP itself defines a small set of operations, the most important of which are GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. People often compare these with the CRUD operations required for data persistence, though POST does not fit cleanly into the comparison. A universal syntax for resource-identification: in a RESTful system, every resource is through the resource's
uniquely addressable
URI.
The use of hypermedia both for application information and application state-transitions: representations in a REST system are typically HTML or XML files that contain both information and links to other resources; as a result, it is often possible to navigate from one REST resource to many others, simply by following links, without requiring the use of registries or other additional infrastructure.
11
Web 2.0
Wikis –
Communal Information Development
website multiple authors Ward Cunningham 1995 community changing documents on-line A wiki is a
that
are the brainchild of
can edit as easily as typing plain text. Wiki, the name and concept,
, who launched the
to support a
first wiki March 25, dynamically on
of like-minded people in accessing and
. His site was a “quick” way to complete a project, and he adopted the
Hawaiian term wiki, “based on the Hawaiian term wiki, meaning "quick," "fast," or "to hasten"”. Interestingly, the source for this quote – Wikipedia – is the largest and most highly regarded online encyclopedia, and is itself a wiki.
original wiki was open to the general public great advantage encourages people add their bits whole body of information The
– one of the authors
(Gerrard) began reading it in 1996, and contributing to it in 1997. The to
of this approach is that it
of information to the
that’s been provided by all the contributors.
12
Web 2.0
Wikis… Wikis make it easy to contribute
open access philosophy typing to enter information simple markup language deliberate simplicity easy for all users to the information contained in a web site through their
, straight
, and
used to identify
different kinds of content. Entering information into a wiki is just typing; what you type is what goes in. Beyond that, the of the wiki mark-up language makes it
, regardless of their technical
expertise, to add more complex elements. Creating new pages is accomplished by typing a word in an existing page using
CamelCase
– capital letters begin each individual word in a combined string of words. When the wiki sees a CamelCase word it
recognizes that it refers to a separate page, creates the page if it doesn’t exist, and provides an HTML link to it wherever the CamelCase word appears. Other markup elements such as bolding and italicizing text and inserting bulleted lists are accomplished through similarly simple markups; e.g. text written “
*the ocean doesn’t want me today*” gets displayed as “the ocean doesn’t want me
today”.
13
Web 2.0
Wikis‌ Wikis can be public, as already seen, or private. Acquiring a private wiki is easy; software that runs a wiki – the wiki engine, is available in a bedazzling array of choices. Wiki engines are written in every major programming language (and many minor ones), have a vast array of features, and are available as both open source and commercial offerings. Wikis are also available as hosted services, which are suitable for exploratory and private use, but are less attractive in a business environment where the information in the wiki may constitute an intellectual asset. Many corporations implement public wikis as customer support tools, and private wikis as part of their internal knowledge management systems.
Wiki information available multiple channels links CamelCase. Notification email RSS feeds searching simple title search a page containing recent changes index page is
within the wiki is available thorough the
through
. The information
between page written by the authors via
of changes to the content can be sent to interested parties through
(described later) can provide periodic updates to subscribers to the
capability, ranging from a
notifications. RSS feeds
. Wikis normally provide
to an all-encompassing wiki community search. Most wikis also offer and
.
14
Web 2.0
Blogs – Personal Publishing blog weblog periodic articles immediate publication A
, or
(derived from web + log), is a
primarily of
web-based publication
consisting
normally, but not always, in reverse chronological order. They permit the of relatively small scale pieces of information.
Peter Merholz coined the term “blog” in May of 1999 but by that time the concept of blogging was widespread. There is no definite point of emergence of blogs; before blogs, electronic communities in the form of email lists, discussion forums, and bulletin boards existed to publish user
Blogs publish straight to the web link to the original content blogs on every subject imaginable content.
content and then
evolved as a means to
comments, additions and afterthoughts
, and made it easy to publish .
There are
, published worldwide by both individuals and
corporations. Creating information with a blog is extremely simple. Once the blog software is in place one only needs to create a new entry and start typing. Blog software is available to install and use, and blogging services are available from a number of hosted services such as Blogger, LiveJournal, and OpenDiary. As with wikis, corporations can install and initiate private blogs, and determint Since most corporations prefer to maintain control, the simplest solution is to download a blog application, install it on a server, define user rights and start publishing.
15
Web 2.0
blogs…Distribution feeds
. In addition, special
make it possible to
sift
of blog content is possible through
blog search engines specific content
email RSS or
, such as Google BlogSearch, Technorati, and Feedster[1],
through millions of blogs and retrieve
. For example, BlawgRepublic is a
blog search engine created specifically to search law blogs. The true benefits of blogging for a corporation are “to provide a window into the behindthe-scenes goings on at their business, presenting a more personal "face" to the public rather than a cold corporate persona”, and to elicit customer feedback. Many entrepreneurs are using blogs to
create a personal relationship
with their target
audience, giving consumers a sense of ownership in product design, marketing, and eventual launch.
corporations monitoring respond to emerging issues incorporate recommendations into blogs to respond to a potential disaster are
Large
product blogs to quickly
and to
future releases. The most recent example of a
is Apple with their iPod Nano. Soon after the initial release of the Nano, blogs appeared complaining about a screen glitch and
lack of durability[2]. Before the issue escalated into a full-blown disaster, Apple announced they would replace all defective units. Ironically, instead of this debacle hurting Apple’s reputation, they were
commended for their quick
response
. Corporations are also using blogs to provide users with expert advice. As a pre-emptive move, Macromedia launched
blogs before the release of their Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and ColdFusion applications to rave reviews. Marketing departments are also creating special blogs, called BusiBlogs, to advertise and promote their products and services. 16
Web 2.0
RSS Real Simple Syndication Rich Site Summary feeds keep up new information feed readers
RSS, originally
, now commonly called
, is a way of packaging changes to Web content in a standard XML format and making it available through a well know
mechanism, termed “
”, so that interested parties can
with the
. The
feed consists of XML that encapsulates the new information, and can be accessed via
– programs that contact the
web site and retrieve the feed. RSS began as a way for people to see what was new on the sites that interested them. Feed readers, originally
Web 2.0 RSS feeders mashups
standalone applications, became commonplace in email programs and web browsers. In are being used to
gather information
for use in
, as in
http://almaer.com/blog/archives/000931.html, describing the retrieval of specially tagged photographs from Flickr and combing those photographs with Google maps to produce custom maps with pictures of locations attached.
17
Web 2.0
Tagging… attaching key words to pieces of web content. The only restriction is that the content be reachable via a URI. Seemingly innocuous, the act of tagging, when practiced by large numbers of people, has proven to be enormously powerful. When two people tag different items with the same key word they are forming an association between the items, and the association is a link that can be followed by a tag-aware system. When multiple people use the same key word the effect is to create a category of meaning Tagging refers to the practice of
that includes all the tagged items as members of the category. A category of meaning created through the growth of tags has been termed a
Folksonomy,
itself a “portmanteau of the words folk (or folks) and taxonomy, the term folksonomy has been attributed to Thomas
Vander Wal.”[1] Tagging sites like del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) have proven to be extremely popular; one reason is that they provide the social function of allowing
explore common interests. From a corporate perspective, the emergence of folksonomies has been proposed as a very effective way of organizing information according to the concepts and meanings of the people intimately engaged with it, and that the creation of environments that support the effective growth and use of tagging and folksonomies can provide real value in leveraging an organizations knowledge assets.
the a user to see what other people have applied one’s tags to, and thereby
18
Web 2.0
Finding Information – Searching and Browsing Findability will eventually be
Finding information when it is relevant and useful is essential to realizing the value of the information. "
a central and defining challenge in the development of web sites, intranets, knowledge management systems and online communities."[1] In today’s knowledge economy, learning and finding are powered by all manner of links between and among people and documents. These links may be explicit, as is the case with HTML hyperlinks, or implicit, as in similarly tagged items in a folksonomy. There are three basic ways to find information in the Web 2.0: surfing, browsing and searching. Surfing is the process of following hyperlinks through HTML documents and is the fundamental mechanism; it supports enables the others. Surfing has its roots in Vannevar Bush’s trails[2] and Tim Berners-Lee’s work; it will not be discussed further in this paper. Browsing allows one to see the contents of the system, indexed by subject or topic. Searching allows you to see a custom generated list of resources that match your query. recognized as
19
Web 2.0
searching… Computerized
searching for information has been around for a very long time. In the early web searching was very
limited. Early search engines relied upon the
classic searching techniques such as text indexing, in-document
proximity analysis, and limited word stemming. As the web grew exponentially, these techniques, even coupled with the taxonomic approach exemplified by Yahoo became unwieldy and unreliable in locating “the best”, or even highly associated or relevant results.
Google’s PageRanking mechanism
of weighting a web resource (pages) using the number of links to it from other locations provided an external measure of the importance of the page’s information.
Searching in Web 2.0 builds upon Web 1.0, and promises to provide real benefits in the usefulness of information, particularly within organizational boundaries. With the advent of low cost search appliances from companies like Google, it is now possible to locate virtually information accessible via the organizational network. The Web 2.0 search challenges involve incorporating the
new information relationships that are emerging. Wikis and blogs rely on hyperlinks and commenting to extend information, these are not fundamentally different from Web 1.0, their volume and granularity pose interesting problems. The greater challenge, and far greater potential payoff, is in using the emerging
associative connections to reveal higher-level relationships
between and among information assets. For example, a corporate folksonomy contains the information structure and relationships meaningful to the people who grow it; the ability to employ this meta-information to find and provide
reveal relevant information will
real strategic benefits.
20
Web 2.0
browsing … taxonomic systems preset information structures metadata libraries, classification systems Web 2.0 browsing ad hoc associative information structures grow in place power of the intersection Web 2.0 enrich the information universe in powerful Browsing has in the past normally been the province of
that have
connected via efficient indexes of well-identified characteristics of the information.
These characteristics include
or some
combination of the two. Most classic knowledge management systems are oriented around this approach. In
the concept of
is extended out to include that “
” as people interact with the information and provide their individual
associations – subject or topic, usually in the form of tags. We begin to see here the of the different elements of
in to
and useful ways.
21
Web 2.0
Novel Uses of Information –
Mashups and Aggregation
22
Web 2.0
23
Web 2.0
Web Services and SOA Business of modern world has benefited from the protocols that allow
heterogeneous computer
systems to interoperate defines components or services using XML implementation details to be hidden efficiently. These technologies are referred to web services collectively.
Later SOAP 1.1 was introduced; it
content during interactions in distributed systems and allows technology
. The new technology has led to widespread use of web services.
The move to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) did not commerce until 2000. SOA represents a bigger picture of what we could do with web services. It is an approach to build distributed systems that deliver or build application functionalities as services to end-user applications.
24
Web 2.0
principles‌ Web services are built on concepts using underlying software components to offer services through interface. It is a big leap from component architecture because it further extends the
separation of services from their implementations.
The notion that service is the integral part of component thinking and the introduction of COBRA are both the prelude to service-oriented architecture. While Web Services is the programmatic interface that follows the principles of separation of services, independence of the platforms
Service Oriented Architecture is much wider in scope addressing policies, rules and common services that enable: and loose-coupling transport,
•A logical business structure for use by internal and external clients regardless of implementation technologies; •Design and quality of service characteristics that enable use or reuse, abstraction and conformation with service level agreements.
Technology neutrality, Endpoint platform Independence, Transport and interface standardization, Standards based protocols, Separation of provider and consumer, Enabling automatic discovery and usage, Enabled by SOA, Functional standardization, Use(reuse) of service; not reuse copying of code/implementation, Abstraction,
Enabled by Web Services,
Service is abstracted away from the implementation, enabling technology and application independence, Formalization of relationship,
Formal contract between endpoints, places obligations on provider and consumer, Relevance. Functionality presented at a granularity recognized by the user as a meaningful service
25
Web 2.0
technology‌ two key roles service provider As with web services there are
with SOA architecture:
service requestor
and
. The requester application invokes the services offered by provider applications by sending request
messages. Requester also processes response messages sent by provider. Some providers could also be requestors. They aggregate responses from the other providers to construct composite responses. Certain SOA technologies such as UDDI and WS-Trust also use a service broker as an intermediate for brokered trust agreements or service location, etc. The W3C SOAP 1.2 standard defines the use of XML-formatted messages for communication between a service requestor and a service provider. Requesting message (XML) put in a SOAP envelope (also XML) is sent to the provider. Provider sends the message back in the same format.
SOAP neutral vendor neutral
is the best way to support invocation in a SOA environment involving heterogeneous systems. It is and
platform
. However, SOA does not always require SOAP. The company could build the SOA
using Java, for example, as long as all entities are written in the same language. But this is not workable with a scenario when multiple partners and heterogeneous platforms are in the picture.
26
Web 2.0
service description … The
Web Services Description Language
(WSDL) specifies the XML language for
defining the contract between service provider and requestor in terms of messages. WSDL contains the following content: •Request message format
•Response message format •Where to send messages WSDL is based on XML therefore it is machine-readable. The developers could use this protocol to
automate service
discovery and invocation
. For example, a Java proxy object can be generated to invoke any Web service
from its WSDL description, regardless of how the service is implemented, either using Java, C#, or any other languages. In fact, WSDL does not specify implementation details such as programming language.
27
Web 2.0
service discovery‌ Universal Description, Discovery,
Service discovery is optional for SOA. UDDI (
and Integration
) defines a standard interface (based on SOAP messages) for publishing the availability of the services and
for finding a required service. UDDI implements a
service registry
which is a broker between the provider and requestor.
SOA does not require UDDI however it could be a wise choice if SOAP is the protocol that is being implemented since UDDI is built on SOAP.
28
Web 2.0
benefits‌ SOA that properly reflects the real world creates
perspectives control
convergence of the business and IT efficiency, adaptability cost
and promotes greater
and
in business relationships and structures. The service creates looser coupling between business models and technologies. This will reduce the dependency on specific technologies or products. Specification of functionalities into independent services would facilitate shared business and technical services that enable consistency across the enterprise and local variation. Self-describing nature of the run-time services enables automation of business rules and technical functions, reducing human intervention and promoting straight-through processing. SOA services can be extensively re-used and the protocol encourages asset repurposing.
29
Web 2.0
30
Web 2.0
31
Web 2.0
32
he necessity to provide access to large bodies of separate pieces of information and proposed a mechanism for connecting the pieces to one another into “trails” that could be followed to track the information associations. n 1989 Tim Berners-Lee “proposed that a global hypertext space be created in which any network-accessible information could be refered to by a single Universal Document Identifier" (UDI). In 1990 he wrote the first [Gia] hypertext server and an editor named “WorlDwidEweb”. A simple browser for hypertext document written by Nicola Pellow was also released, creating what would become the World Wide Web (WWW). This would have been remarkable [Max] enough in and of itself, but the real breakthrough was the publication of the specifications of the enabling echnologies –UDI (since changed to URL), HTML, and HTTP, on the Web server, allowing everyone who wanted to take part in the new way of sharing nformation to jump in and create their own Web servers, pages, sites, and browsers, leveraging [Hamid] the strength of the idea. The spread of Web page and sites was and is unparalleled in its breadth, and with the emergence of page-based browsers Vannevar Bush’s concept of vast bodies of interconnecte nformation available to everyone was well under way. This was Web 1.0 “The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact tha a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or [prady], be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and ocialize. Web 2.0 is not “about” technology; rather, it builds upon the Web 1.0 foundation [Chris] by incorporating old and new technologies, techniques and concepts of information creation, distribution, and access into a much richer information universe where the value of information can be tapped in ways previously unknown, and in many ways unanticipated. This paper examines the elements that make up Web 2.0, considers their benefits, and proposes ways in which the modern information organization can further its strategic goals by embracing the Web 2.0 principles and practices. The foundation technologies of Web 2.0 are the same as those of Web 1.0. The emergence of Web 2.0 has taken place through the coupling of technology with progression of innovation in the use of the technology for novel purposes. As an example, the creation of Web forms in 1993 enabled the RESTful approach to information systems architecture by providing the ability to send parameterized information to the Web server in a request; Ward Cunningham first Wiki in 1995, so that a community could truly collaborate their body of ook advantage of this ability to create common knowledge. The heart of is the concept that information should be easy to create, easy to connect together in meaningful ways, easy to locate when it is relevant or interesting, and easy to combine into novel forms that reveal unintentional connectedness and thus permit the creation of “new” knowledge. These principles are realized in a variety of ways; flexibility is a hallmark of Web 2.0. Information in Web 2.0 can be created in a wide variety of ways, and contained in an even wider variety of formats, ranging from the traightforward HTML page to complex proprietary-format documents to dynamic data retrieved from databases in another dimension. In Web 2.0 the concept of information is “it’s all the same” – information is information, as long as it is accessible through the mechanisms of the Web, including the newer mechanisms described below. Vannevar Bush articulated the concept of “associative indexing”, the process of tying two things together so that any tem may be caused to select another. Tim Berners-Lee provided the means to link information together via embedded links declared in HTML. Web 2.0 has embraced and extended the concept of connectedness by incorporating external mechanisms for connecting together previously disconnected items. These range from passive and internal to highly dynamic and organic. The following sections describe the mechanisms at work in each context. The value of information exists only in its usage. There are multiple ways in which the information held within Web 2.0 that can be found and retrieved. The classic web browsing or surfing is the concept of following Vannevar Bush’s trails laid down by a pioneer how has been through the information before you and aid down the markers to follow. There are other ways, from the purely human to the purely automated. Again, each following section will describe the elevant information access mechanisms. (this paragraph needs work as the intro to the individual sections, will revisit after their review &/or) Beginning with the ability to incorporate informatio gathering through the use of forms, following the RESTful architectural patterns, through the emergence of Wikis and their true collaboration model of nformation development, to Weblogs/Blogs, coupled with RSS and email for disseminating information to interested parties, to social networks and their mpact on the collaborative development of meaning, …, through to Web Services and their SOA cousin providing the larger scale, more formal 33 approach
Web 2.0