Led by JackBe, software makers form mashup alliance

The group, including such vendors as Intel, Adobe Systems, and HP, will promote domain-specific language for interoperable mashups

Here comes another industry alliance -- this time for enterprise mashup technologies.

A group of software companies and others Thursday plan to announce the Open Mashup Alliance (OMA) to focus on use of enterprise mashup technologies and promote Enterprise Mashup Markup Language (EMML) for development, interoperability, and compatibility in enterprise mashup technologies.

[ Alson on InfoWorld: "JackBe is promoting safe mashups." ]

Leading the effort is mashup software maker JackBe along with other vendors such as Intel, Adobe Systems, HP, Capgemini, Kapow Technologies, and Bank of America.

Acknowledging the tendency in the IT space to form industry organizations for a multitude of tasks, John Crupi, CTO of JackBe, stressed OMA was different. "This is a little different because this isn't just a bunch of companies and vendors getting together saying we want to promote the goodness and happiness of mashups," Crupi said. The difference is the contribution of EMML to the effort, he said. Developed by JackBe, EMML is a domain-specific language based on XML for building and running enterprise mashups.

JackBe defines a mashup as an application combining and mixing data from disparate sources, such as Web services, news feeds, and databases.

OMA will develop EMML, which is to be governed under a Creative Commons License of Attribution No Derivitives, which means the work can be copied but not altered. An EMML runtime reference implementation will be offered. The alliance plans to offer the EMML 1.0 specification for a future contribution to a standards body such as OASIS or the World Wide Web Consortium.

"This group is collectively coming together both as practitioners, providers, and users to get the language essentially to the next level and eventually turn it over to a standards body," Crupi said. Enhancements pondered for EMML include adding hooks enabling more processing of unstructured data, such as Word documents. Addition of backing for authentication services also is a possibility.

OMA expects to have regular meetings, possibly monthly or quarterly. Other parties will be able to join the alliance.