The Web is changing from long pages of text to structured and interlinked data. Allowing users to interact with and navigate that data provides a richer and more informative experience. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are often used to provide a compelling and interactive user interface. For developers, the difficulty is that each new RIA requires its own bespoke data management layer - a data store, tools for managing the data and services for accessing the data from the RIA. If the requirements for the RIA are changed or if new data is made available, the developer must modify this data storage layer as well as the RIA itself, making changes more costly and time consuming.
The Web3 Platform provides a code-free data management layer. Structured and interlinked data can be created through the Web3 platform editor interface. Web3 services provide JSON and XML representations of the data entities via a RESTful interface. No code is required to create or modify the schemas that govern a Web3 Platform application, making it quick and easy to respond to changing data requirements.
In addition to providing human-readable access to data, many data owners now also want to make the data available to other applications. The Web3 Platform supports Linked Data standards for exposing structured and semantically linked data sets.
Examples
A sporting organization publishes information about competitions, fixtures, teams, and results over a period of many years. The organization’s website provides an RIA to allow users to browse by competition, competitor etc. and to view results as a dynamic timeline.
Tourist information organizations publish information about places to visit, places to stay, things to do. A compelling tourist information website provides users with a map and category integration to allow them to find local points of interest.
In the advertising industry there is frequently the need to create a product launch site or other micro-site with an interactive experience driven by product features and sales concepts.