What is Data Mashup?

Are you wondering what is data mashup? Let’s discuss this in detail.

Data is the fuel of the modern world and modern businesses thrive on it. Digital users are creating terabytes of data every day using multiple software applications like social media sites, news sites, google searches, online shopping stores, etc. 

 All this data is of not much use if business analysts are unable to derive useful insights from it. Therefore, businesses today make efforts to utilize this data by using the latest technology of machine learning and data analytics. 

Different techniques have been founded to collect, analyze, and process the collected business data efficiently. Data mashup is one such technique for effective data analysis and processing.

Data Mashup

Data mashup refers to combining data from different data sources into a single application. The integration of heterogeneous business data from different sources into one place gives a unified overview of the business processes. 

Data mashing is also referred to as enterprise or business mashing. The data mashup technique removes the need for heavy work in the complex ETL pipeline or data warehousing. 

Different data from multiple sources like a structured database source like SQL, a web service like SOAP, an unstructured database like MongoDB, etc., is collected under one business interface.

The data can be taken from a cloud source or on-site file systems. Different formats of data can be used to make one data layer for insights discovery and reporting.

The data is presented in the form of tables, graphs, and reports for better and more efficient data analysis.

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Data mashups offer multiple benefits to businesses using them for data querying and viewing. Some of these are:

• In-depth data analysis allows business developers to uncover new revenue streams.
• Business analysts are able to better understand their business data and even find new relationships between various data sources. 
• A better understanding of business data and interdependence leads to better decision-making and improved practices for conducting business processes.

Examples of Data Mashups

Some examples of data mashups in use by business analysts today include:

Overlay Mashups

Overlaymashup refers to integrating more than one data source into a single web application or a web-based feature. Usually, APIs are used to create such overlay mashups. 

One common example is mashing charts and graphs over maps feature in a web app. Google API is most commonly used as it is open source. 

Businesses can use this geographical location data and combine it with other dynamic data sources, for example, inventory stocks, customer location data, etc., to efficiently contribute to various business processes like purchase funnels, supply chains, customer flow, etc., by making available useful insights.

The creation of such overlay mashups requires the availability of extensive open-source APIs like Google maps API and modular web application features.

Dashboards

Business dashboards are a prominent example of data mashups. A BI dashboard pulls up data from multiple data sources and presents a single view for data visualization and reporting. 

For example, a sales manager can use a sales dashboard to quickly view current sales, the performance of the concerned department, future sales projections, etc., from single or multiple sources of information.

Mostly, dashboards today are built using AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML). AJAX introduces flexibility like integrating charts, graphs, etc., to a web page and refreshing individual objects without reloading the whole window.

Currently, most business dashboards collect data from a single underlying data source like a company’s data warehouse. However, more complex dashboards can integrate heterogeneous digital data sources like social media feeds, web services, flat files, third-party platforms like Google Analytics, etc.

Widgets

Another example of a data mashup is a widget. Widgets are code pieces that are sourced from an external third-party site and embedded into a software application. 

Widgets help increase the functionality of a software application and are not limited to just business applications. They allow the display of information from another data source without going to that source through a separate link.

For example, a sports website can include a widget of a video player to play match highlights from an ongoing tournament, a finance app can integrate a stocks exchange widget, a news app can include a weather widget to show the current temperature, etc., without leaving the original application.

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Business intelligence applications can also make use of widget mashups to integrate different data sources and display visual information, like the number of application visitors, server response time, etc.

Tools to Build Data Mashups

You can look into the following tools to implement data mashups for your business processes:

InetSoft

InetSoft is a business intelligence platform with dashboards and reporting capabilities. It offers extensive features for creating enterprise data mashups that can be linked to the existing IT infrastructure easily. 

It also offers a drag-and-drop data query-building tool that helps beginner users to get started with data mashup applications like cross-functional dashboards, competitive analysis, compliance and risk assessments, disaster monitoring and response, etc.

Tableau

Tableau, a popular data visualization tool, has offered major improvements to its data mashup features in version 10. 

It offers drag-and-drop data clustering, mobile-friendly dashboards, Google sheets support, cross-database joins, site-specific authentication protocols, etc., that enable efficient and secure data processing and analysis by sales, business, and marketing teams.

BrightGuage

BrightGuage is another interactive tool to create data mashups by combining more than one data source in the form of a dashboard. KPIs (key performance indicators) can be tracked using these combined data sets for actionable insights.

Three products offered by Bright Guage are dashboards, goal collections, and client reporting. Moreover, it offers a range of third-party integrations like Zendesk, Salesforce, OneDrive, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc., to create a comprehensive experience for business analysts.

Orbit Analytics

Orbit analytics helps with operational reporting, business intelligence, data management, and financial reporting through modern reporting solutions. 

It offers plugins for integrations with native applications, pre-built analytics and reporting models, migration utilities like automated legacy migration programs, etc.

Klipfolio

Klipfolio helps businesses centralize their data for self-exploration and analysis through custom dashboards and reporting systems. 

The tool helps in implementing a metric-first approach for analysis through three types of metric features; instant metrics that a business can instantly use for their data, custom business metrics that users can develop on their own by uploading a file or connecting to a database, and calculated metrics for using multiple metrics in a single formula.

Klipfolio also offers multiple business dashboard templates and KPI examples.

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Planning to Implement Data Mashups?

Businesses collect huge amounts of data that include transactional data, sales records, purchase history, inventory stocks, customer support data, and so on. 

Today, with the use of advanced data science technologies, this big data is converted into useful information. Multiple data visualization tools and techniques help achieve this, one being data mashing.

Do you plan to implement a data mashup or business mashup strategy into your business processes to achieve actionable insights from them?

You will need a professional team of data analysts to implement data mashups successfully and to use the right tools for achieving business intelligence objectives. Read our blog for more on using business intelligence automation for your business.

You can also build a custom BI tool for your business that implements a data mashing strategy according to your business requirements. You will need competent software developers for such custom software development.

We advise you to partner with an experienced software development agency for building such a software solution. 

DevTeam.Space can help you here via its field-expert software developers community. These developers are skilled in cutting-edge technologies and have built market-competitive software solutions for a range of industries.

Write to us your initial project requirements via this quick form, and one of our account managers will get back to you for more details on how we can help you.

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