The IDE Working Group, in collaboration with the Gadgets Task Force, has completed an initial draft of the “OpenAjax Metadata Specification”. OpenAjax Metadata represents a set of industry-standard metadata defined by the OpenAjax Alliance that enhances interoperability across Ajax toolkits and Ajax products. With version 1.0, OpenAjax Alliance defines metadata for the following:

• Ajax widgets – OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 defines metadata for two definitions of the term “widget”:
  • UI controls – Some Ajax libraries provide a set of user interface building block components such as combo boxes, menu bars, or charts
  • Mashup components (aka “widgets” and “gadgets”) – Mashup frameworks allow for pre-packaged mini-applications (sometimes called “widgets” or “gadgets”) to be combined together within a composite application (the “mashup”), where the mashup components react to each other intelligently, such as when the user selects an address in one component which causes a different component to display an updated map that shows the given address.
• Ajax APIs – OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 provides a reasonably comprehensive set of metadata that describes the runtime JavaScript APIs (e.g., classes and methods) that are available for an Ajax library.
• Ajax libraries – OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 defines a handful of metadata fields for Ajax runtime libraries, much of which aligns with entries in the OpenAjax Registry.

The primary target consumers of OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 are software products. It is expected that these software products will consume and use the metadata to provide enhanced experience for users who building Ajax-powered solutions. In particular:

• Mashup frameworks will use OpenAjax Metadata to use OpenAjax Metadata for widgets, such as the message types that the widget produces and consumes and the customization parameters that the widget supports
• Ajax IDEs will use OpenAjax Metadata to provide the developer with (presumably automatically-generated) API documentation, intelligent code-assist, widget palettes, and widget property editors

The draft specification can be found at: /member/wiki/OpenAjax_Metadata_Specification. The IDE Working Group is early in the development process, so it is expected that there will be significant changes as the Working Group, implementers, and the public provide feedback. Public feedback is encouraged and can be sent to public@openajax.org.