Implementing Mobile Mashware Architecture: Downloadable Components as On-Demand Services

The software industry is in the middle of a paradigm shift from desktop to mobile and web-based software. In the new era, applications increasingly live on the Web as services that lend themselves for runtime configuration. The associated delivery model, referred to on-demand software, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), implies that applications do not require installation or manual upgrades by the end users, as they are loaded on the fly. Furthermore, applications that build on resources offered by other applications, referred to as mashups, offer increasingly interesting opportunities. We believe that the trend towards using the web as an application platform will only strengthen in the future, and that instead of individual applications, it will also be possible to use application components in the same way we today download complete applications – in essence the Web is used as an architecture and transport for distributed applications, similarly to e.g. Corba at the level of principal idea. In this paper, we provide an overview for mashware computing, where downloadable components form applications in a piecemeal fashion, and enable rich access to resources of devices in a programmer-friendly way. Furthermore, applications can be easily built by components created by others and available as services. Finally, we demonstrate the capabilities of the concept with a sample application and discuss the lessons learned during the design process