Middleware :: essays research papers

Middleware In the away several decades, a trend has emerged where mid to large size corporations perk up affected to integrate their existing processor systems with their newer PC based selective knowledge systems. With this shift in focus toward PC based communications and productivity software that became available on the market, companies scrambled for ways to tie PCs and mainframes together. This created the need for middleware.Companies discovered that the hardware and programming, involved in maintaining mainframe systems, was too pricey to replace overnight. In addition to the expense, the applications in place for the most dissociate served their purpose and appeared to be much more(prenominal) stable than the personal computers. They keep master files for customers as well as inventory levels, generated bills and invoices and, with the right coder and vision, the mainframes could extract just about any information that managers needed. As PCs became more prevale nt for a fraction of the cost and with the development of the Internet and a global network, PC applications with productivity software such as Microsoft space and connection to the Internet have become imperative in nearly every business setting. As these resources became available, users such as employees could now gate information easily and instantly, share information simultaneously, and communicate both outwardly and internally through electronic mail. The questions then arose concerning what to do with the expensive mainframe systems and how to permit the PCs to interact. Middleware has become the final result to this problem.A middleware program is an interface in the midst of an application and a server. The most useful are those that resign find to the vast resources stored on the highly developed and expensive mainframe databases with a simple user friendly program, like a web browser. other example is what Kaiser Permanente implemented to ease the ordering and mo nitoring of prescriptions. Kaiser bought a NetWeave middleware solution to tie its VAX pharmacy systems to a Tandem master subscriber database to allow subscribers to dial in prescription orders from their touch-tone phones. NetWeave gives us an illustration of how middleware works below. You drive out find more information on NetWeave at www.netweave.com. It is clear that with the quick shift in business focus to pc-based information systems, which the demand for scalability and information on-the-fly, will create a huge demand for middleware.