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Forget buying software; build your next application from existing components
Over the past year, publicly available government information has been appearing all over the Web—on Google Maps.
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When the search giant posted its own mapping Web service, it did something unusual. It published the application programming interfaces—the code that delivers maps, pointers and associated features—to the Web page. In effect, Google was offering its mapping program to third-party Web sites and programs. Creative Web designers could use the maps to locate relevant public information with no expensive geographic information system needed.
One individual, for instance, mapped global earthquake readings from the Geological Survey. Adrian Holovaty, a Chicago-based Internet developer, created ChicagoCrime.org, which uses police data feeds to map where crime is happening in the city, parsing the info by ZIP code, ATMs, gas stations and any number of other ways (Holovaty also works for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, a division of the Washington Post Co., which owns GCN). The raw information gets downloaded from an online database query service set up by the Chicago Police Department’s Records Division.
The Google Map fad is the most visible artifact of a larger trend toward tying together different programs and data sources over a network in order to build entirely new applications. These “mash-ups,” as they’re informally called, often make better use of existing data and can even replace expensive software altogether.
The Silicon Valley digerati call this Web 2.0, referring to how the Web can serve up not only pages, but actual programming components. And it’s become a perfect example of service-oriented architecture in action, which seeks to define applications by loosely coupled business services that can be reused for different functions.
Kim Nelson, former CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency and executive director of e-government for Microsoft Federal, sees the merits. “I think anybody would find it useful in terms of looking at various components and making decisions about what they could avoid building in the future because certain components already exist,” she said.
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