Hi, my name is Andi Gutmans. I'm Co-Founder of Zend. TodayI'm going to talk about what is Web 2.0. A lot of people ask me what Web 2.0is. They've heard of things like blogging, they've heard of mash-ups, they'veheard of Ajax and other buzzwords, but they don't quite understand what it actuallymeans. They've used Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube, Flicker, a lot of theYahoo sites, but still there is something missing in explanation.
The first part of Web 2.0 is RIA, or rich internetapplications. Some buzzwords that relate to that are Flash and Ajax. What richinternet applications really are is how do we bring the experience from thedesktop into the browser, whether it's from a graphical point of view or fromusability point of view, such as drag and drop, which everyone is used to fromthe desktop.
The second piece of Web 2.0 is SOA. SOA are service orientedarchitectures. It's one of the key pieces in Web 2.0. That includes buzzwordssuch as feeds, RSS, web services and everyone's heard of mash-ups. What SOA isall about is how do Web 2.0 applications expose their functionality so thatother applications can leverage and integrate the functionality, providing amuch richer set of applications, including the infamous mash-ups.
The third piece of Web 2.0 is the social web. Web 2.0 applicationstend to interact much more with the end-user. The end-user is not only a userof the application, but is a participant, whether it's by tagging the content,whether he's contributing to the wiki, or doing podcasts or blogging. Part ofthe social nature of these applications, the end-user is an integral part ofthe data of the application, providing feedback, allowing the application toleverage the users that are using it.
There are really three things you should be looking for in atechnology. The first one is that they have very good Ajax support. Ajax is aset of key technologies used to build Web 2.0 applications. It is used tocreate the rich user experience and it works in any browser, whether Firefox orInternet Explorer.
The second thing you should be looking for is a languagewith very good web services support. As I mentioned before, web services is akey part of Web 2.0 and you need a language that makes it very, very easy toleverage those services.
The third is have a language that is iterative. What thatmeans is that you can very easily add features, deploy new features and getthose applications updated. It's critical when these web applications are beingused by so many end-users and you have to constantly update them.
