Clarity -- APIs, Web Services, Mash-ups, etc.

Richard Butterworth just helped me to understand the whole idea of the web 2.0, the semantic web and stuff that goes along with it.

So an API system has two parts: a complicated (inside) part and a simple (outside) part.  We don't need to understand how the complicated part works so long as it works and gives us the information that we need.  The simple part tells the instructions that we need to get the data out of the inside of the system.  So, the actual API is the instructions that tell us how to get the data we need.  For example, he showed me the art web site that he has that is connected with Facebook.  He got the programming code from FB and added it to his programming code so that he can send a message to a user on how to access a particular work of art.  The instructions in the email is the API. 

The web service is a type of API.  He used the Bridgeman Art website that he uses.  The web service queries the database using urls.  Inside of the url you put the search term that you are looking for along with your username and password (if a subscription service). The data is returned as an XML document. 

The purpose of the APIs and web services is to get the information as XML so that you can then create mashups and mobile applications.  Once you have the data in a machine readable format (XML), what you can do is limitless. 

Today's lecture about open source data is an effort by the UK and US governments to make public data available to create new pieces of information.  For example, you can get data from the government regarding the bus stops in the city.  Then you would use that data to create a mashup with a map of handicap accessible locations to create a new source of information for handicapped citizens. 

The purpose of the RDF language is to make an even less ambiguous language than XML. XML still requires human interpretation in order for the computer to make sense of the information.  The RDF language is designed so that no or minimal human interpretation is required.

I think that one of my major sources of confusion is that I was trying to understand how, where, when and why I or some other non-programmer person would use this information.  The answer is that they wouldn't.  This is mainly for computer programmers.  The mashups are supposed to be designed so that non-technical people can use it but Richard says that some programming skills are necessary to make it fully functional.