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AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a set of technologies for development of rich and dynamic Web 2.0 pages. It relies on several Web standards like HTML, XHTML, DOM, JavaScript, XML, JSON, XmlHttpRequest, etc. Ajax applications are faster than traditional Web applications (due to the asynchronous XmlHttpRequest protocol and local CSS formatting) and have a better look and feel (RIA). Ajax competes with other RIA technologies like Flex, Silverlight and JavaFX. There are hundreds of Ajax frameworks. C-EMS can generate components compliant with Ajax.
See Web 2.0 and RIA.

API - Application Programming Interface Interface is a set of functions published by a software component (application, service, etc.) allowing external systems to access it. APIs provide an easy way to integrate, synchronize and link systems together. There are various kinds of APIs, some are standardized, and others are proprietary, some are low-level technical oriented, others are high-level, business oriented. For instance, JDBC is the low-level technical API to access relational databases in Java, JPA is a high-level technical API to access relational databases in Java and some CRM packaged applications publish business-oriented Web services APIs giving access to their internal database through an intermediate business model hiding the complexity of underlying physical models.
See API less.

API less - In the Convertigo terminology, qualifies an application, a data feed, a web page or any kind of content or container that has no metadata and high-level API to access it. See non-structured. Mainframe green screens and traditional Web pages are typical API less, non-structured assets. Accessing API less resources could be quite difficult and requires some kind of “interception” low-level technology to access and manipulate information sometimes at the byte level. Web clipping and screen scraping are typical interception technologies. Due to this technical complexity, ability to access API less resources is a key differentiator of C-EMS, whereas most competitors only focus on structured resources. The unstructured legacy "green screen" mainframe and “legacy web” applications (intra-extra-internet) represents a huge part of existing assets of organizations and Corporations.
See Non-structured and Legacy.

Application server - An application server is a complete software stack providing all functionalities for distributed applications: web server, JSP server, persistence, transactions, component and service models, messaging system, connectivity to databases and applications, etc.
See Java, Persistence, JPA, JDBC, JTA, JMS, Tomcat.

Assemble - Action of putting widgets and mashables together, by simply connecting them together and share data and logic.
See Compose.

Atom is both a format (based on XML) and a protocol (based on HTTP) for periodic syndication of content (blog entries, news feeds, etc.). C-EMS can consume Atom feeds. See RSS.

BPEL - Business Process Execution Language is a standardized definition of a Business Process, including the various steps and branches and input and output formats.
See BPM, Web services and WSDL.

BPM - Business Process Modeling is way to represent high-level business functionalities as a complex process connecting business services together. Workflow, rules engine can be also seen as BPM. BPEL is a standardized language to define BPM, BPMN (modeling notation) is a visual representation of business processes.
See BPEL and Web services.

Business Mashups - A kind of mashup filling business needs. A business mashup typically gives access to business applications like ERP, SCM, CRM, SFA, etc.
See Enterprise Mashup and Mashup.

C-EMS - Convertigo Enterprise Mashup Server is the Convertigo platform for design, development, deployment and administration of Enterprise Mashups. It includes one Eclipse-based IT studio for developers and one Web-based Mashup Composer for business users and several modules for connectivity to both structured and non-structured contents and applications. C-EMS can produce mashups compliant with Ajax, Flex, SharePoint, Web services (both SOAP and REST), RSS and Atom feeds.
Deployment in the Cloud is supported since version 5.0.
See Enterprise Mashups, IT Studio, Mashup Composer and Modules.

Cloud - A new way to deploy applications off-premises, on servers available on the Internet (e.g. the Cloud). Cloud computing has several levels like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, etc. See IaaS, PaaS. The main difference between Cloud and SaaS is that in the Cloud the customer owns its infrastructure (even if it is remotely hosted); while in SaaS he just rents access to some business functionalities.

Component - In the Convertigo terminology means Widgets, Web services, RSS, sequences that can be stored, shared and reused, composed and mixed.
See Mashable.

Compose - Put widgets and mashables on a Web page and connect them together.
See Assemble.

Composite Application - A new kind of applications with of various components assembled together. Sometimes wrongly depicted as a synonym of mashup.
SOA is all about connector "standardization", composite applications are all about pieces or parts of applications containing their own "graphical representation" and logic. The main concept is: no front end to redevelop on business process...
Applications are decomposed and recomposed from small parts which contain services, business logic and UI.

Connection - The operation which consists in establishing a communication with a data source (Web server, database engine). Frequently requires authentication. In the C-EMS terminology, modules manage connections with data sources, data feeds, contents and containers.
See Module.

Data harvesting - Action of automatically collecting data from various Web sites and integrate it into a new data source used by business functionalities. A typical example consists in creating and enriching retailer catalog information from manufacturers Web sites.
See Data Mashup.

Data Mashup - In the Convertigo terminology a data mashup is dedicated on collection, integration and sometimes transformation of data coming from heterogeneous data sources. A typical use case is Data harvesting on the Web. When data has to be manipulated in more complex, more real-time scenarios we rather use Process Mashups.
See Mashup, Enterprise Mashup, Process Mashup, Data harvesting and ETL.

Data Services - Data Services are the latest evolution of Data Integration. Data Services aggregate data coming from multiple heterogeneous data sources and present it as business services that can be consumed by Java, .NET, BPEL and any other client technology. SDO (Service Data Object) is the multi-language standard for Data Services defined by OASIS and the JCP. One might consider Data Services and Process Mashups as competitive technologies.
See EII, Persistence, Process Mashup and LCDS.

Dream Face - Dream Face 2 is a Web-based tool based on Flex supporting visual assembling and linking of widgets and mashables in order to produce and share mashups. Dream Face includes a library of widgets, It is the underlying technology used in the C-EMS Mashup Composer.
See Mashup, Mashup Composer, Assemble, Mix and Widget.

EAI - Enterprise Application Integration products are dedicated to synchronize information between the main applications of an organization. EAI products detect changes and then propagate them based on rules. EAI is normally seen as a Hub between all applications, but in practice it has often been criticized for being just a set of one-to-one synchronizations. ESB products are somewhat a replacement for EAI, based on SOA and XML standards.
See EII and ESB.

EC2 - A popular Cloud Platform provided by Amazon. C-EMS 5.0 is based on EC2 but provides a fully pre-configured environment and an additional real-time monitoring layer to Convertigo customers.
See Cloud and IaaS.

Eclipse - A popular open source integrated development environment (IDE) for Java. IT Studio is built upon Eclipse (it is an Eclipse plugin actually), and Convertigo’s R&D is using Eclipse internally.
See Java.

EII - Enterprise Information Integration is a way to integrate and manipulate data coming from heterogeneous data sources. The Virtual Federated Database model is the common one, where all data sources are federated in a central virtual database that can be accessed either through SQL or XLML. The latest evolution of EII products are Data Services Platforms.
See EAI and Data Services.

EMML - Enterprise Mashup Markup Language is a language to define Enterprise Mashups and visual tools for them. The goal is to increase mashups portability and interoperability. It is currently defined by the Open Mashup Alliance. There is a basic Eclipse plug-in from JackBe for EMML, called the Mashup Studio. At the time being, EMML is mostly data oriented but it supports scripting languages.
See Enterprise Mashups.

Enterprise Mashup - A kind of mashup that serves business purposes. Enterprise mashups typically access and manipulate data, call multiple services, and present rich interfaces to business users.
See Data mashup, Process mashup and Presentation mashup.

ESB - Enterprise Service Bus is a new kind of messaging and event systems based on services. ESB are frequently used as a replacement for traditional EAI system. In Java, ESB usually rely on JMS.
See EAI.

ETL - Extract, Transform and Load are technologies to migrate data from multiple production data sources to decision support data sources (e.g. data warehouses). Like Data Mashups, ETL processes are usually non-transactional and batch-oriented. ETL are a key component in Business Intelligence (BI). Some ETL vendors are trying to add more real-time support, as Convertigo already has with Process Mashups.
See EII, ESB and Data Mashup.

Flex - A visual development environment from Adobe, supporting development of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), e.g. applications deployed on the Internet but with a sophisticated user interface (based on Flash).
See LCDS and Mosaic.

Green screen - The character-based user interface commonly available in the old mainframe legacy applications. Based on host-to-screen network protocols like 3270, 5250, etc.
See Legacy, API less and Non-structured.

IaaS - The character-based user interface. The first level of Cloud where only the infrastructure is provided on the Internet, users are responsible for what they deploy on it, including the low level stacks (OS, database, app servers, frameworks, etc.). It is quite open, but requires more effort than PaaS for instance.
See Cloud, EC2, SaaS and PaaS.

IT Studio - The C-EMS Eclipse-based development environment for Enterprise Mashups targeting IT users. IT Studio allows connections to data sources and creation of sequences. IT Studio is a WYSIWYG point-and-click environment supporting drag and drop. The counterpart tool geared towards business users is the Mashup Composer. Having 2 different studios for developers and business users is one key differentiator of C-EMS.

iWidget - In the IBM terminology, an iWidget is a reusable component that can be deployed in Web applications and participate in a mashup environment. C-EMS can generate components compliant with the iWidget specification.
See Widget.

J2E - Java Enterprise Environment is a superset of Java for development and deployment of large Enterprise distributed applications. J2E is in fact a placeholder for various specifications like EJB, JTA, JMS, JCA, etc.
See Java, SOA and WOA.

Java - A generic language created by Sun, used to develop and deploy any kind of scientific or business applications. There is quite a complete environment around Java (libraries, frameworks), and Java is appreciated for its portability (Write once, run anywhere). Most of C-EMS is written in Java.
See Eclipse and J2E.

JCA - Java Connector Architecture is a specification for connection to packaged applications (ERP, CRM, SFA, SCM, etc.) and other resources from Java. JCA has been designed for synchronous and transactional access to resources; therefore is not very relevant to Enterprise Mashups.
See Java, J2E and Module.

JCP - The Java Community Process is the open standardization group who defines all the extensions to the Java language and platform. The JCP is divided on expert groups, each of them working on a Java Specification Request (JSR).
See Java.

JDBC - Java Database Connectivity is the standard Java API to access relational databases (RDBMS) through SQL.
See Java, Persistence and JPA.

JMS - Java Messaging Service is the standard Java API for messaging systems. It supports various protocols like Publish and Subscribe, etc.
See Java, ESB and Application server.

JPA - Java Persistence Architecture is the standardized Java API for persistence e.g. access to relational data through a business model instead of SQL. JDO (Java Data Objects) was the ancestor of JPA. Hibernate and Toplink are 2 popular JPA implementations.
See Java, Persistence, JDBC, LCDS and application server.

JSR#168 - Specification from the Java Community Process (JCP) standardizing Portlets. It specifies the contract between the portlet and the portlet container (e.g. the portal), increasing the interoperability of portlets.
JSR #286 is the version 2 of Java Portlet.
See Java and Portlet.

JTA - Life Cycle Data Services, a technology from Adobe to access structured data from Flex and LiveCycle including Mosaic and Forms.

LCDS - Qualifies old data and applications, deployed a long time before the Internet. Mainframe applications are typically legacy assets. Legacy assets are still very important in value and volume, and still increasing. They are also difficult to access from modern applications. One benefit of C-EMS is its ability to access legacy assets.
See Green screen and Non-structured.

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See Screen scraping.

Legacy Integrator - In the Convertigo terminology, any component than can be assembled or composed to build a mashup. It could be the result of a transaction or of a sequence.
See Component.

Mash Mashable - A new kind of applications, with or without visual rendering. Mashups are built by connecting components.

Mashup - A C-EMS full Web-based visual tool allowing composition of mashables into mashups. The counterpart tool geared towards developers is the IT Studio. Having 2 different studios for developers and business users is one key differentiator of C-EMS.
See IT Studio and Dream Face.

Mashup Composer - An Eclipse-based C-EMS tool allowing description of sequences of calls of transactions, with branches and business logic. It is also acting as a services orchestrator. The result is a mashable. See Sequence and Orchestration.

Mashup Sequencer - In the Convertigo terminology, the action of assembling mahsables from various heterogeneous origins (public widgets, business widgets, sequences, transactions, services, etc.)
See Compose and Mash.

Module - In the Convertigo terminology, one part of the C-EMS platform giving access to a particular kind of content. There are C-EMS modules for legacy mainframe screens, Web pages, Web services, XML, SQL tables, etc.
See Connection, Structured and Non-structured.

Monitor - The action of observing a system running in production. The main goals of monitoring are to optimize the system, detect failures, and anticipate problems. C-EMS 5.0 provides monitoring through the administration console.

Mosaic - A new development tool from Adobe for composite applications, part of LifeCycle. Results are named views or tiles but to some extent, these are just regular mashups.
See Flex, Tile and LCDS.

Non-structured - Contents and applications that have no well-formed schema, no metadata and no convenient high-level API to access it. Access to non-structured contents and applications is one key differentiator of C-EMS.
NB: for most IT people non-structured refers to non-structured data e.g. data without schema or metadata, like full texts, pictures, videos and more generally something difficult to index and retrieve. In the Convertigo terminology, non-structured usually refers to non-structured applications.
See API less, Structured, Screen scraping, Web clipping and Module.

OASIS - OASIS is an open consortium working on the standardization of Web services.
See SOAP, Web services and SOA.

Orchestrate - Define sequences of services, possibly with parallel branches to describe more complex business processes.
See Mashup Sequencer.

PaaS - Platform as a Service is a higher-level of Cloud, where not only the infrastructure is provided but also a full stack for application deployment: OS, database, language, frameworks, tools and administration. Google Apps is a PaaS, so is Convertigo Cloud.
See Cloud, Iaas and SaaS.

Persistence - A way to access data in database through a business model instead of manually using low-level APIs like JDBC. Also know as Object-relational mapping (ORM) when connected to relational databases (RDBMS). Persistence technologies help developers to keep focus on the business logic and hide the technical complexity of dealing with low-level data sources APIs.
See JPA, JDBC and LCDS

Portal - A portal is a web site aggregating content on a given subject from various sources and presenting it in a unified way. Portlets are standardized elements of a portal. Mashups are different from portals because portal elements (e.g. portlets) are not easy to connect, share and reuse.
See Portlet and Mashup.

Portlet - A portlet is an elementary, pluggable element of a portal. C-EMS can generate portlets.
See Portal.

POX - Plain Old XML, pure basic XML, without any surrounding protocol like SOAP, REST, etc.

POW - Plain old Web, qualifies Web 1.0 standard HTML pages, with no AJAX, RIA, Flash, etc.

Presentation Mashup - A presentation mashup is a visual mashup, e.g. a mashup mixing different visual mashables. A presentation mashup is a composition of widgets wired together with business logic.
See Enterprise Mashup, Mashup Composer and Widget.

REST - Representational State Transfer is a new kind of software architecture for development of Web applications based on the basic principles of the Internet.
REST has been mostly designed as a reaction against the complexity of SOAP. REST is often associated with WOA.
2 key REST concepts are uniform resource identification and use of HTTP verbs to access and manipulate data. Web services can be deployed according to REST concepts.
C-EMS can generate REST compliant services.
See Web service, SOA, SOAP and WOA.

RIA - Rich Internet Applications are new Web 2.0 applications with a fast and modern user interface similar to desktop applications.
See Web 2.0, Ajax and Flex.

RSS- RSS is a family of XML formats for syndication of content on the Internet. C-EMS can consume RSS feeds.
See Atom.

SaaS - Software as a Service is a new way to deliver software functionalities to customers. Instead of selling traditional packages and licenses to be installed, configured and deployed on-premises servers, software functionalities are rented and remotely accessed on off-premises servers available on the Web. SalesForce.com is a good example of SaaS.
See Cloud.

Screen scraping - Screen scraping technologies allow capturing character-based user interfaces of legacy mainframe applications intended for human usage by retrieving the data from virtual screen buffers and translate them into more recent technologies such as Web services or graphical widgets.
See Legacy, Legacy Integrator, Non-structured, API less.

Sequence - In the Convertigo terminology, a sequence is a list of calls to transactions (and services) returning a mashable. A sequence can have parallel branches and can call other sequences (non recursively).
See Mashup Sequencer and Orchestrate.

Service - A service is an elementary business functionality designed to be called by applications and integrated into business processes. Web services are good examples of services, but there are other kinds of services like EJB or CORBA components for instance. A mainframe CICS transaction or stored procedures in a database are also services. There is always a data source behind a service, but the service provides an intermediate business-oriented API and data model to access it.
See SOA and Web services.

SOA - Service Oriented Architecture is a new kind of software architecture focused on designing software as a set of communicating services instead of monolithic applications. The main goal is to separate business logic from business elements and therefore gain agility and better reuse business functionalities across processes. Another goal of SOA was to address the complexity of J2E development, but to some extent it failed and has been under attack by WOA proponents.
See J2E and services.

SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol is a standard defined by OASIS for implementation of Web Services. SOAP is sometimes considered as too complex and REST is seen as a simpler solution. Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) is one key component of the SOAP standard.
C-EMS generated services are SOAP compliant.
See SOA and REST.

Structured - Contents and applications that have well-formed schema, metadata and convenient high-level API to access it. Relational databases, object databases, XML files, Web services and some packaged applications (SAP, SalesForce, etc.) are typical structured source of information.
See Non-structured and Module.

Tile - In the Adobe terminology, tiles are context-aware UI application components that can be assembled to create unified views that best suit the user’s work habits and specific needs. It is like a business widget or a mashable.
See Mosaic, Flex, LCDS, Mashable and Widget.

Tomcat - A popular open-source Java based Web server. Tomcat is a Java Server Page (JSP) technology and as opposed to a full J2E application server it has no support for Enterprise Java Bean (EJB). The generation of dynamic Web pages is done at the server side. C-EMS embeds a Tomcat server.
See Java and Application server.

Transaction - In the Convertigo terminology, a transaction is an elementary call to a service returning a result. NB: we have to take care when we use this term with IT people. To them, transaction means much more than what we mean; and many IT people would say that we do not really enforce transactions.
See JTA, Sequence and Mashable.

Web 2.0 - A new set of technologiesallowing users to contribute to the Web, including Social Web, Semantic Web, RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, Tweeter, FaceBook, Rich Interfaces (RIA, Ajax, Flex, Silverlight, etc.).
Some say it is the world of “My” (MySpace, etc.), it is rather the world of “Us” (sharing, collaboration, etc.). Mashups are a key technology of the Web 2.0.

Web clipping - In the Convertigo terminology, Web clipping is a module allowing capture of parts of Web pages in order to reuse them into mashups. This allows integrating Web sites designed without integration capabilities. The clipped parts are still alive and interactive with the original Web site (preserving business logic and data integrating). Web clipping produces visual widgets based on XHTML and AJAX.
See Data harvesting, Non-structured, API less, IT Studio and Web integrator.

Web integrator - In the Convertigo terminology, Web integrator is a module providing a Web service interface (SOAP, REST, RSS, Atom, POX) on top of existing Web pages. Web integrator produces visual mashables based on POX, Web Services, etc.
See Data harvesting, Non-structured, API less, IT Studio and Web clipping.

Web part -Basic element in Microsoft SharePoint (technically it is an ASP.NET control), designed to be added by users into a Web page, in order to customize it. Equivalent of a portlet in the Java environment.
C-EMS can produce Web parts.
See Portlet and Portal.

Web service - An elementary business functionality deployed on the Web and designed to be called by applications and integrated into business processes. Web services present a structured and well-defined business interface. The services are described in a WSDL file (Web service Definition Language), and the content is defined by an XSD (XML Schema definition).
C-EMS can call and expose Web services. C-EMS 5 can import WSDL file and all the available functionalities described in it at once.
Various Web services APIs are standardized by the OASIS consortium.
SOAP is a standardized heavyweight protocol used to access Web services, defined by OASIS. There are other alternate lightweight protocols like REST.
See SOA, services, SOAP, OASIS, WSDL and Structured.

A portable, visual element, providing some functionality, able to communicate and react, added by users in Web 2.0 pages or rich composite applications. Enterprise widgets (as opposed to most other kinds of widgets such as iGoogle, NetVibes…) can be wired together into mashups.
See Mashup, Mashable, iWidget.

Widget - Web Oriented Architecture. A new kind of architecture for Information Systems designed in reaction against the complexity of SOA and SOAP. WOA relies on the basic concepts of the Web.
See SOA and REST.

WS-* is a set of standards for Web services defined by OASIS.
See SOA, SOAP and Web Service.

Web Services Definition Language (based on XML) is a standardized way to define and expose what a Web Service is doing, allowing easier integration into more complex business processes (like BPEL processes for instance).
See SOA, SOAP and Web Services.

XML is a standardized structured text format mainly used to transfer information between systems. XML texts have associated schema, defining the structure of their content. There are many technical and business standards based on XML. SOA, Web Services, ESBs are examples of technologies heavily relying on XML.

XML-based UI Language is a complete Web/HTML parser technology from the Gecko Mozilla project. It is the underlying technology used in Convertigo’s Web clipping module. XUL is compliant with all the Web standards from the W3C and is regularly updated to fit with the latest evolutions.
See Web clipping.

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