The event was a first of a projected series of online discussions hosted by software provider Nexaweb, which also announced a partnership with Kapow Technologies. Under the agreement, Kapow will help companies implement its Mashup Server, a visual scripting tool for making Web 2.0 applications, along with Nexaweb's platform, whose platform focuses on AJAX (asynchronous Java and XML) within service-oriented data systems. The idea is that companies that are trying to create a more efficient IT environment based on SOA could also develop online applications that tie into those systems.

Kapow Technologies CTO Stefan Andreasen said the partnership would facilitate the creation of so-called enterprise mashups, which combine services in network-based data into multiple applications and make them available through a dashboard of some kind. These kinds of tools make it much easier for companies to offer self-service features to their users, he said, while making use of existing IT infrastructure.

"This is not a competition with SOA but a complement that meets a different set of needs," he said.

The mashups will give users better-automated tasks and the ability to deliver software programs more quickly, Andreasen said. They would in essence be what developers are calling RIAs that use APIs, such as SOAP and RSS, and offer a downloadable "offline" mode as well as an online one.

"The number-one obstacle is to get access to the data," he said. "A lot of enterprises have 6,000 internal Web applications with no API ... the information the knowledge workers have is only what they can personally see on their screen."

Nexaweb's chief architect, Bob Buffone, said the prime candidates for enterprise mashups will be complex, composite applications with dynamic, non-linear workflows.

"We're not talking about (spreadsheets) with a few rows of information. We're talking about data that has thousands of rows that need to be updated in real-time," he said, using the example of a foreign exchange application that has to update information about currency prices with minimal latency. "Right now in companies, there's a lot of heads-down data entry. These kinds of applications will need something that doesn't require a mouse, more of a tab-type interface."