Just my two cents, take it at that if you want.

Paul R.

Thank for the pin! Once “Middleware” started being thrown in the air I’ve been trying to catch it, exactly… But it’s a target that never stood still long enough to pin down. The most true and most practical definition are in your article! Unfortunately , while I love the definition you quoted, the truest I’ve seen, marketing/spewing fever will keep the term alive despite sage advice closing the quote.

Decades of dealing with house plumbing and software plumbing made my really appreciate your analogy. Your analogy can even cover the “in the computer” leaky and frozen pipes, dripping valves, and pipes rotted so thin they break when you grasp them, I’ve spent so much time on.

Decades of trying to “understand” made me appreciate Jessica’s post rebelling against the religion I first encountered in the alters of the glass walled rooms. The plumbing analogy is very much in line with my belief that people who understand a technology can explain it in words regular people can understand while people with lesser knowledge often hide behind walls of jargon.

All this makes DNS, DHCP and definitely LDAP middleware products. Which just proves that the term middleware is just a new term to describe an old classification of products. Though there is a whole new catalog of what is considered middleware. I know this because I have been supporting middleware in one form or another for the past 20 years.

I will say this is one of the best definitions of middleware I have ever come across and will add it to my repertoire of definitions of those things that my customers ask about.