In Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services. The term implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs and data sources to produce enriched results that were not necessarily the original reason for producing the raw source data.
The main characteristics of the mashup are combination, visualization, and aggregation. It is important to make existing data more useful, moreover for personal and professional use.
To be able to permanently access the data of other services, mashups are generally client applications or hosted online. Since 2010, two major mashup vendors have added support for hosted deployment based on Cloud computing solutions; that are Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.
In the past years, more and more Web applications have published APIs that enable software developers to easily integrate data and functions instead of building them by themselves. Mashups can be considered to have an active role in the evolution of social software and Web 2.0. Mashup composition tools are usually simple enough to be used by end-users. They generally do not require programming skills and rather support visual wiring of GUI widgets, services and components together. Therefore, these tools contribute to a new vision of theWeb, where users are able to contribute.
The term mashup is also used to describe a remix of digital data.
SOURCE: Wikipedia
