The concept of allowing users to munge data together however they like is fatally
flawed. Remember that old buzzword "business integration"? It was supposed to
allow companies to create data warehouses that users could access and combine
information however they wanted to use as "knowledge workers".
Guess what? Most failed. BI tools ended up being glorified reporting tools. It is
simply implausible to expect all users to be able to select the information they need
to do the job they are expected to do. Some workers can, no doubt about that, but
the vast majority are simply there to do the same process, day in, day out, take the
money and run.
The makers of these tools are expecting workers to fully understand the
information they are getting, to understand exactly what it means, then apply that
to achieve some business outcome in isolation from anyone else around them.
Sorry, Mashups are just glorified user-defined "portals", which are also a dismal
failure.
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