Announcing the 2008 InteropFest for IDEs and Mashups

Blogged by: Jon Ferraiolo on August 22, 2008 at 3:46 pm

OpenAjax Alliance is pleased to announce the start of this year’s interoperability event, the 2008 InteropFest for IDEs and Mashups. The 2008 InteropFest continues until just before AJAXWorld West 2008 (i.e., until just before October 20, 2008).

The 2008 InteropFest focuses on two main areas: Ajax IDEs and secure mashups.

InteropFest Focus #1: Ajax IDEs

Today, Ajax tooling falls short of potential, in large part due to interoperability problems. There are a number of Ajax IDEs today and hundreds of Ajax libraries, but only a small fraction of IDEs work well with only a small fraction of Ajax libraries, usually due to one-off coordination between particular Ajax libraries and particular IDEs.

To promote strong plug-and-play between Ajax IDEs and Ajax libraries, OpenAjax Alliance has developed an industry standard called “OpenAjax Metadata” (/member/wiki/OpenAjax_Metadata_Specification), which defines an industry standard XML grammar for the following:

  • JavaScript APIs – Descriptive information about the namespaces, classes, methods, parameters, properties, etc. found in JavaScript libraries. This API metadata can be used by Ajax IDEs to deliver content-assist features and interactive help.
  • Widgets – XML metadata, along with wrapper HTML and JavaScript, for the UI controls found in many Ajax libraries. This widget metadata can be used by Ajax IDEs to populate widget palettes and to allow visual layout of Ajax applications.

InteropFest Focus #2: Secure Mashups

OpenAjax Alliance is working on multiple related technology efforts in order to help realize the potential of mashup technologies to enable user-generated situational applications, where applications are assembled by end users by dragging various widgets onto a canvas and connecting widgets together. The two main inhibitors to widespread deployment of mashups are security issues and interoperability challenges:

  • Mashup security: OpenAjax Alliance is addressing security primarily through the secure mashup runtime environment found within OpenAjax Hub 1.1.
  • Widget interoperability: The alliance is addressing widget interoperability primarily through its widget metadata standards found within OpenAjax Metadata (see the related discussion of widgets in the discussion about IDEs)

The OpenAjax Hub 1.1 is the key technology piece for addessing mashup security issues. OpenAjax Metadata for Widgets is the key technology piece for addressing the widget interoperability challenges.

Further information

The 2008 InteropFest is a major interoperability event covering multiple workflows, multiple types of products, multiple technical specifications, and multiple open source efforts. For more information, see: