Middleware

Middleware

Abstract:

Middleware is a class of software technologies designed to help manage the complexity & heterogeneity inherent in distributed systems. Middleware always mask heterogeneity of networks & hardware. Most middleware frameworks also mask heterogeneity of operating systems or programming languages, or both. A few such as CORBA, also mask heterogeneity among vendor implementations of the same middleware standard. Finally, programming abstractions offered by middleware can provide transparency with respect to distribution in one or more of the following dimensions: location, concurrency, replication, failures, & mobility.

Middleware can be considered as a layer of software above the OS but below the application program that provides a common programming abstraction across a distributed system. In doing so, it provides a higher-level building block for programmers than Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). This significantly reduces the burden on application programmers by relieving them of tedious & error-prone programming. Middleware is sometimes informally called plumbing because it connects parts of a distributed application with data pipes & then passes data between them.

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