A Framework for Evaluation of Mashup Tools

Mashup Programming is one of the latest trends inweb application development. However, different sources stillregard that mashup technology is in its infancy despite themushroom growth of mashup-based applications andtechnologies. This calls for an in depth analysis of the supportavailable to end users for mashup development. In this paper, wepropose a multi-dimensional framework to evaluate existingmashup tools and platforms. The main idea behind thisevaluation is to study the state of the art of mashup developmentfrom the end-user perspective and critically evaluate the effortsin this regard against a set of criteria to identify the researchdirections in this field. The idea of evaluation of mashup tools hasbeen tackled through different approaches in past, however, inthis research we attempt to synthesize additional conceptsregarding mashup development and analyse this area againstpreviously ignored factors, such as support for capturing users’requirements and users’ goals. This study also includes platformsthat have not yet been covered by previous evaluation studies.The framework presented in this study can be used as a guidelineto inform future design of mashup development environmentsfor both academic and industrial research. The results of thestudy reinforce the need of a more user-oriented approach todeal with the inherent issues of end-user mashup programming.The study concludes with the proposal of use of goals as aguiding mechanism to derive the mashup applications.