The Problem With Web 2.0
Much of what people consider Web 2.0 now-a-days is built on the idea that you take different pieces of data from different applications and blend them together, creating something better.
This essentially means that you are utilizing third-party programming as an integral part of your own product. Of course those that are familiar with programming in general realize that almost all commercial products out there are made possible because third-party programming was used to handle some of the functionality.
The problem arises when a bug exists in the third-party programming, and there are always bugs in any product, so this happens alot. If I am using your product to enhance my own product then I will have to find a work-around to that bug. Fortunately you are probably going to fix that bug at some point, but, unfortunately, that fix may now break my product because the work-around is no longer valid.
With non-web-based products there is a physical product that can allow for versioning and upgrading. So I can choose when to use the new code, giving me a chance to fix any bugs that were caused because of the upgrade before releasing it to the general public.
With web-based products, though, such as many of the Web 2.0 products out there, there is frequently no means of preventing your product's new code from being used in my product and my product breaks without me having a chance to fix it. One of the big benefits of the web is the ability to upgrade a product without having the user do anything, but when that product is an API (Application Programming Interface - the way that my program talks to your program), and there is only one version available at any time (always the latest) then this can be very detrimental.
I'm not sure what the solution to this is. In order for versioning to be put into place with web-based APIs it would require that the provider of the API maintain code and servers to handle all the previous versions and this is not a plausible solution.
If anyone has any ideas about this or thoughts on it let me know.
This essentially means that you are utilizing third-party programming as an integral part of your own product. Of course those that are familiar with programming in general realize that almost all commercial products out there are made possible because third-party programming was used to handle some of the functionality.
The problem arises when a bug exists in the third-party programming, and there are always bugs in any product, so this happens alot. If I am using your product to enhance my own product then I will have to find a work-around to that bug. Fortunately you are probably going to fix that bug at some point, but, unfortunately, that fix may now break my product because the work-around is no longer valid.
With non-web-based products there is a physical product that can allow for versioning and upgrading. So I can choose when to use the new code, giving me a chance to fix any bugs that were caused because of the upgrade before releasing it to the general public.
With web-based products, though, such as many of the Web 2.0 products out there, there is frequently no means of preventing your product's new code from being used in my product and my product breaks without me having a chance to fix it. One of the big benefits of the web is the ability to upgrade a product without having the user do anything, but when that product is an API (Application Programming Interface - the way that my program talks to your program), and there is only one version available at any time (always the latest) then this can be very detrimental.
I'm not sure what the solution to this is. In order for versioning to be put into place with web-based APIs it would require that the provider of the API maintain code and servers to handle all the previous versions and this is not a plausible solution.
If anyone has any ideas about this or thoughts on it let me know.
posted by The Entreprexplorer | 10:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home