Mashups are a current hype that is attracting high interest by
academia and industry now and in the next years. The idea behind
a mashup is to create new content by reusing and combining
existing content from heterogeneous sources. Advantages of
mashups are that even people with no knowledge of programming
languages can easily build new Web applications and create new
forms of visualizations. To support the mashup construction
process several tools have been proposed with easy-to-use
functionalities. However, from the research perspective it is
dissatisfying that neither a clear definition and classification
model for mashups nor a separation between mashups and other
forms of application integrations exist. The aim of this paper is to
elucidate the mashup hype by providing a definition and
classification model for mashups and to sketch a methodical
engineering guide for mashups. Additionally, an overview of
tools and languages supporting the mashup creation is presented.