IBM came out with the "Middleware is everywhere" campaign. Sun then came out with a campaign that attacks it directly: "Middleware is history". When I was in the bay area, I kept seeing both of these ads, and laughed. The JDJ asked Salil Deshpande, CEO of The Middleware Company, what he thought about Sun's crazy claim.

Salil spoke pretty bluntly:

"Jonathan Schwartz has said some silly things over the years, but this one might take the cake. Saying that middleware is history is like saying our nation's highways, railways, and waterways are history. They are boring when working well, maybe, but not history.

On the contrary, middleware is the future. It is constantly evolving, adapting, and innovating; and there are standards, because computing will never be a one stop shopping experience. Sun understands this, I think they just need to work on their message. If they don't refocus on what they do well, Sun will be history."

Read "Middleware Is Alive and Well, Thanks!" Says TMC's Deshpande

This is a silly question, but I thought Salil was President and Ed was CEO? Is he still around?

Hi Sandeep-

Salil Deshpande is the CEO of The Middleware Company. We've undergone a makeover and Ed Roman has decided to return to school to focus his career on the video game industry.

We'll be doing some more formal public communications about TMC's new management team, business model and direction in early April.

Thanks,
Tyler Jewell
The Middleware Company

Tyler,

  For you reason you name seems to be switching between on Sarah and Tyler on server side. I took a snap shot just in case:
http://javaswamy.blogspot.com/Tyler.JPG

Kumar.

Damn typos :-)

Hi Kumar-

Yes, Sarah Johnson is my QA account that I use to test to make sure that things are working on TSS.com and TSS.NET. It comes across better than "Test Account".

In this case, with TSS cookies, I was still logged in under my test account. So, after this was noticed, I asked Dion to move the post under my regular account: Tyler Jewell. I've found it challenging to manage multiple TSS accounts for QA.

Tyler

I've found it challenging to manage multiple TSS accounts for QA.

You're not the only one!

- Frank Bean

Middleware should be dead.

Whats middleware, it is;

    (a) An interface into legacy systems
and (b) A mapping tool.

(a) should be SOAP and (b) should be XSLT.

Bye byte TIBCO, Webmethods, Vitria, SeeBeyond...

XSLT will be dead too, Flash has a SOAP connector :-)

I think what Sun says is: the Middleware itself is history, Java enterprise is the future. The core (or one of the cores) of Java enterprise is J2EE.

--- If I understand the article right. They are play word games.

I think it is quite remarkable how these campaigns regarding middleware (pro/con) are driven by politics and the obvious market share. Need to hype the next best thing, anyone? I think in this case its comparing apples and oranges...

Read this article on CUJ by Vinoski, Doug Schmidt which discusses web services with/vs CORBA: http://www.cuj.com/documents/s=7990/cujcexp1910vinoski/

"Ed Roman has decided to return to school to focus his career on the video game industry"

It is a surprise to me. EJB master left the J2EE industry and joing game industry :-(

<quote>
It is a surprise to me. EJB master left the J2EE industry and joing game industry :-(
</quote>

Not at all ;-) I can understand him. After being in J2EE from the beginning, slowly but surely, I feel that J2EE is becoming steady. Everything works fine, the specification process continues to make it better, etc. but nothing special and "new" anymore. Just take a look at the discussion forum in TSS, you see many same questions. I think J2EE product life-cycle has just completed. Now we are back in the beginning of J2EE, better, but again, nothing special and new.

For persons, who love to invent something new, it's just the time to leave J2EE to search for a new frontier. I wish him good luck and thank you for your great work in the J2EE frontier!

Regards,
Lofi.
http://www.openuss.org

>
> It is a surprise to me. EJB master left the J2EE industry and joing game industry :-(

Well, we still have j2ee master, don't we? On this forum I mean, hope he has not left (yet?), though he's been quiet lately ... :)

Hi
 Its very sad to get to know that edroman has shifted his focus from j2ee.
He is the guy who made us to understand j2ee -EJB .We have come to a comfortable stage bcoz of guys like him.
It will be better to get edromans thoughts in an interview .He is well knowledged.


But till there is a lot to come.
Till yet the entire j2ee stuff is behind five releases i beleive.
 We still dont have a proper persistence concepts, fully portable stuff,
Till i feel it as a complex system.Iam not feeling it much comfortabel though
i have worked on more than 5 j2ee projects involing franklin templeton,Costpoint.... New more security levels are expected,IDE integration has to more comfortable,More tags on ejb integration with jsp.
........


ABT Middelware ..

The middleware products are too costlier and they are truely propretiary .These guys dont give a trial download and we have to go to them even for a training.
I used webmethods little bit of tibco ,mqseries..
Atleat IBM is giving a trial download,But webmethods i used, found very costly ..
and even a adapter there price tag is heavy
..Actually we have given a blow to the money machine Microsoft...Now its time
to make things to work agains costlier middleware and application servers.

Do any one know opensouce middleware performing well?

I too love to see his thoughts.
Anyway, thanks Ed for your EJB/J2EE work.