Middleware for Distributed Systems
Richard E. Schantz, Douglas C. Schmidt · Wiley Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering · 2007
Abstract Improvements in hardware and networking technologies over the past decades have yielded dramatic increases in computer and communication capabilities. Despite these advances, the effort and cost required to develop, validate, port, and enhance software for distributed systems remained remarkably high. Much of the complexity and cost of building these systems can be alleviated by the use of highly flexible, efficient, dependable, and secure middleware , which is infrastructure software that resides between the applications and the underlying operating systems, networks, and hardware, specifically intended to provide a more appropriate platform for building and operating distributed systems. Middleware's primary roles are to (1) functionally bridge the gap between application programs and the lower‐level hardware and software infrastructure to coordinate how parts of applications are connected and how they interoperate and (2) provide reusable services that can be composed, configured, and deployed to create distributed systems rapidly and robustly by integrating components that may be developed by multiple technology suppliers.