Corporate.Net Invisible Middleware The key benefit of middleware, Web-based or not, is how it hides dissimilarities among the different kinds of computers and operating systems that an application's components run on. For network communications, for instance, middleware offers a simpler API than the underlying transport's API. Middleware makes differences among multiple transports transparent to the application. In the area of transparency, middleware should offer network protocol, operating system, programming language and even API independence. Network independence means that two devices communicating with each other are not required to have a common network protocol. Between operating system platforms and CPU architectures, middleware normalizes data format differences. Most products, such as Sun Microsystems' Open Network Computing (ONC), use a single platform-independent dat a representation, such as External Data Representation (XDR) or the Specification of Basic Encoding Rules for Abstract Syntax Notation (ASN.1). Directory services enhance their basic location transparency benefits with associated services, like transparent load-balancing across services. Some middleware products offer their own directories, along with other mechanisms, for load-balancing.

Internet Rx by Chris Lewis The Dawining of the Age of Java Management by Bruce Boardman Back to Web Middleware Glue Binds Web Apps Updated May 12, 1997