Chapter 22 – Mashed layers and muddled models: Debugging mashup applications

Publisher Summary This chapter explores the relevant research on debugging and evaluates how debugging is complicated by the added complexities of Web programming. Furthermore, it discusses how solutions designed to mitigate the problems and complexities of Web mashup programming introduce new complexities to debugging. In one such environment, the Yahoo! Pipes visual language for Web mashup programming, a community of developers has emerged in which many debugging activities take place through the sharing and collaborative editing of Pipes programs. The community can marshal diverse skills, knowledge, and expertise to debug a broken program, perhaps mitigating some of the complexities particular to Web mashup programming. This discussion concludes with several questions about the future of end-user programming for the World Wide Web, such as do authoring tools such as Yahoo! Pipes actually support true “end users”? How much knowledge of the underlying infrastructure, protocols, and technologies is needed to get started?