Lotus Mashups is a Business Mashups editor developed and distributed by IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 as part of the IBM Mashup Center

IBM Mashup Center

The IBM Mashup Center is an end-to-end enterprise mashup platform that enables the rapid creation, sharing, and discovery of reusable application building blocks that can be easily assembled into new applications or leveraged within existing applications.-Features:IBM Mashup Center...

 system. Lotus Mashups is intended for use in professional environments, such as corporations and governments.

Interface

Lotus Mashups is a self-contained web application, requiring no external software to develop mashup applications. Mashups uses the Dojo

Dojo Toolkit

Dojo Toolkit is an open source modular JavaScript library designed to ease the rapid development of cross-platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications and web sites. It was started by Alex Russell, Dylan Schiemann, David Schontzler, and others in 2004 and is dual-licensed under the modified BSD...

 framework for Web 2.0 functionality.

Integration with Websphere Portal

Lotus Mashups has the ability to integrate portlets into mashup projects. This is accomplished either by importing a portlet from a connected Websphere

IBM WebSphere

IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create applications and integrate applications with other applications...

 Portal

Enterprise portal

An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal or corporate portal, is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries. It provides a secure unified access point, often in the form of a web-based user interface, and is designed...

 server, or by uploading a .WAR file.

Security

In an effort to thwart unauthorized access of sensitive data by externally created widgets, all widgets are self-contained and isolated, unable to pass code back and forth unless specifically enabled by the mashup author.

InfoSphere MashupHub

The data and administration counterpart of Lotus Mashups, InfoSphere

IBM InfoSphere

IBM Infosphere is a branded product line from IBM under its Information Management Software brand, announced in February 2008, which includes software products from its WebSphere and Information Server product lines...

MashupHub is utilized for the following tasks:

• Creating new widgets using data feeds
• Housing a catalog of user-created widgets
• Acting as catalyst for community collaboration

Consumer Use

Although Lotus Greenhouse allows users to use Lotus Mashups free of charge, purchase of IBM Mashup Center is required for private collaboration. Consequently, the consumer market would likely find Lotus Mashups to be cost-prohibitive.

External links

• Lotus Mashups home page
• Lotus Greenhouse - a web site where the public can test-drive Lotus collaboration products free of charge (registration required).