Rich Clients, Rich Data Part II : Consuming

You hear a lot of talk about rich clients, but the richness they purport to provide is predicated on having access to rich data as well as a rich user interaction style. Without the right levels of abstraction, it is hard to address and link all of the data we have to care about these days. Additionally, the web sites that do support the notion of linking require you to publish your data into TheirSpace. Forget that. You want to be able to link publicly available information to sensitive information in YourSpace.

Ever since we started doing relational joins, we've looked for ways to tie data together. The problem is, the relational model is a bit tired and doesn't move at the speed of the Net. We need schemes that integrate relational data, web pages, XML files, RSS feeds and various other sources of information.

The good news is that a slew of emerging technologies are starting to make this happen. Come explore integration strategies that allow real mashups to function on both the web and the Enterprise. We can use a variety of languages and tools to link legacy data and modern content sources. We will explore resource-oriented computing as a new way of building systems that manage information spaces, not code.

We will discuss the benefits and deficiencies of XML in this space as well as look at things like JSON, RSS and RDF. We will look at research projects like Simile from MIT, metadata storage systems like Mulgara and scalable orchestration environments like NetKernel. We'll see how to create your own Yahoo Pipes-like functionality without having to publish What happens when you mix the concepts of REST with Unix Pipes and Service-oriented architectures? What happens when you leverage the power of the web as a global data source in the context of your own day-to-day activities?

The first talk will be an overview of the various topics and technologies that enable the rich data. The second talk will focus on how we can create powerful, user and data-driven applications with the rich data we've linked.

A lot of this will be new and on the intermediate to advanced side, but an open mind is all that is really necessary to catch what is going on.

About Brian Sletten

Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. His experience has spanned many industries including retail, banking, online games, defense, finance, hospitality and health care. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and lives in Auburn, CA. He focuses on web architecture, resource-oriented computing, social networking, the Semantic Web, AI/ML, data science, 3D graphics, visualization, scalable systems, security consulting and other technologies of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. He is also a rabid reader, devoted foodie and has excellent taste in music. If pressed, he might tell you about his International Pop Recording career.

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