About this task
Mashup Center is
an enterprise mashup platform that supports the rapid assembly of
dynamic situational web applications. Business Space shares many
concepts with Mashup Center and
provides a number of ways to interact with Mashup Center components.
In many instances, Mashup Center content
is an additional selection or set of selections within Business Space. You can open
the Mashup Center catalog
from Business Space. From
the catalog, you can access the other components of Mashup Center and use
them to, for example, create content that is viewable within Business Space.
In Mashup Center, some
components, such as the space manager, are very similar in look and
functionality to an equivalent Business Space component.
Other Mashup Center components,
such as feed generators, have no conceptual or functional equivalent
in Business Space, although
the output of these components can be used within Business Space.
The
following list describes some of the major components of
Mashup Center and how
they relate to
Business Space:
- Mashup builder is where you create pages. Functionally, it is
similar to an open business space because it displays a page and the
widgets that it contains. Within the mashup builder, you can use tabs
to navigate to other pages, edit the page to change its layout, and
add and remove widgets from the page. Mashup builder also has hidden
widgets and a mechanism to wire widgets together. Unlike Business Space, the page does
not need to be in a space if you are working in the My Mashup Apps
mode.
- Space manager is where you can create and customize spaces and
the pages that they contain. The space manager in Mashup Center looks
and functions like the Space Manager in Business Space. Spaces are
conceptually similar because they are containers for pages and provide
a common theme and default access control. Unlike Business Space, Mashup Center supports
nested pages.
- Widget builder is where you can create custom widgets. There is
no similar component in Business Space. However, you
can use the widget builder to create custom widgets and then use those
widgets in Business Space.
Additionally, you can use tools such as Rational® Application Developer and Lotus® Widget Factory to create
widgets for Business Space.
- Catalog is a repository to contain artifacts that are common between Business Space and Mashup Center, such
as widgets, pages, and spaces. The catalog also contains artifacts
that are unique to Mashup Center, such
as feeds. When Business Space is
enabled to work with Mashup Center, it accesses
the artifacts in the Mashup Center catalog.
These artifacts are available for users to select in Business Space.
For information on these components and other Mashup Center components,
see the getting started topic in the Mashup Center documentation.