Microformats..

lets define some standards..

Microformats is not something new.. but its something interesting. Its basically defining some standards around the data on a web page.. its a kinda data formats which are used to fetch important information from a webpage. As an simple example, you use some defined keywords in your webpage to fetch this imp information..

Lets take an example where we have a webpage with some addresses defined on that.. now there can be someone who is just interested in fetching those addresses from that page and want to do some action on that.. like looking them up on a Google Map.. So there are two part of it.. fetching the info + taking the action..

lets have a look at the microformat adr defined here ..

<div class="adr">
<div class="street-address">215 xyz St.</div>
<div class="extended-address">more address here</div>
<span class="locality">City</span>
<span class="region">State</span>
<span class="postal-code">ZipCode</span>
<div class="country-name">Country</div>
</div>

and here come some standards.. here we are using adr as class name for any address defined on this web page, using country-name as class name for defining country and so on.. by this it is fairly easy for a tool to check for these important notations, collect them, put them together and provide some actions on that (check The Operator Firefox Extension for the same)..

Same way, you can define your own microformats, create your own tool/plugin to read them and define some useful actions for them..

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Why do I really need a WebService?

Yesterday I was doing some bits and pieces around Java WebServices and then I realized that do I really need a WS.. it's a kinda difficult question (for me ;) .. ) so here i'm putting my thoughts around it..

There can be couple of different scenario's for why someone should opt for WS or need of a WS in business application..

if you are going to use this app for a B2B scenario.. then WS is one of the good option for it.. not just to connect your org internally, but ya talking to clients .. partners .. suppliers etc.. which is like e-business or communication with other apps..

Or there are other different applications interacting with each other or with the backend systems like SAP, mainframes etc.. kind of integration of existing information systems ..

also there might be one more small thing.. that some of the non-java (as i was talkin abt java WS here) apps which need some/all of the functionality of this business app..

this might not be your requirements currently.. but let's talk abt future.. let's talk about expanding this buss application.. n if there is a some kinda need (like B2B etc) in near future.. there might be a req for WS..

and yes ofcourse, one definitely have to check with other advantages which comes with WS like.. its based on well-defined and well-used standards.. service re-usability.. loose-coupling.. SOA.. etc..

Finally, I decided to re-think on what I was doing.. so think again.. think twice.. whether you need it or don't..

Comments/feedback are always appreciated.