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News: Marc Fleury: "Middleware Is Still in its Infancy"

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  1. Marc Fleury: "Middleware Is Still in its Infancy" (11 messages)

    • Posted by: Dion Almaer
    • Posted on: August 02 2004 11:24 EDT
    Remember the "Middleware is everywhere" (IBM) versus "Middleware is history" (Sun) campaigns? Now, Marc Fleury has put his hat in the ring with "Middleware Is Still in its Infancy". In particular, Fleury believes, AOP will help simplify the J2EE framework and enterprise Java programming itself.

    The Middleware Company's Salil Deshpande said:
    "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."
    Read: "Middleware Is Still in its Infancy," Says JBoss's Fleury
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    Threaded Messages (11)

  2. Correction[ Go to top ]

    In particular, Fleury believes, AOP will help simplify the J2EE framework and enterprise Java programming itself.
    Surely this should read "Fleury believes, AO will help simplify the J2EE framework and enterprise Java programming itself."
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  3. Correction[ Go to top ]

    Yes, that must've been a typo indeed :)
    Reply to this Reply to original

  4. Welcome to ObjectWeb![ Go to top ]

    Hey Marc,

    nice to hear from you again.

    We agree with you: middleware is not over yet! ObjectWeb, who's been working on 60+ middleware projects for years, has now an extensive portfolio that covers a good deal of cutting-edge technologies in the field of (Java) middleware.

    Just for the record, I'd like to mention:
    - JOnAS: a non-commercial open-source J2EE appserv currently being certified J2EE 1.4
    - JORAM: a full-fledged MOM with JMS 1.1, SOAP and J2ME connectors
    - XQuark: an XML/XQuery data transformation engine
    - Enhydra Shark/JaWE, Bonita: WfMC engines/GUI
    - C-JDBC: a JDBC driver for RDBMS clusters
    - JAC: an AOP framework
    - Sync4j: a SyncML data synchronization platform
    - JOTM: a distributed transaction manager (used in JOnAS & Geronimo)
    - Enhydra Octopus: an ETL tool
    - and many, many more...

    Altogether, some of these components provide most of the functionnalities expected from an enterprise service bus: see http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/read.php?f=25&i=68&t=68. In this context, Apache Beehive may provide some nice SOA features too.

    It's good to also see Eclipse team up with us to launch an Web/J2EE platform, namely the Web Tools Platform (see: http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/read.php?f=25&i=69&t=69, http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/read.php?f=25&i=72&t=72).

    We all hope JBoss would also join these initiatives, starting with Eclipse WTP -- for it's no use reinventing the wheel!

    Looking forward to hot news from LinuxWorld.
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  5. Correction[ Go to top ]

    AOP = Aspect Oriented Programming
    AO = ???

    it should read AOP, not AO --- what am I missing???
    Reply to this Reply to original

  6. AOP and framework[ Go to top ]

    AOP is good for me. But it's too powerful to ride this horse easly. I believe AOP and XDoctlet will change the J2EE server world completely.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  7. Spring[ Go to top ]

    I think the Spring framework is changing the j2ee world.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  8. hello[ Go to top ]

    The underlying strength of spring has been to reestablish the principles of OO development. For many a year too many developers have been developing O Oh! applications due to thw pitfalls of adopting EJB imho ;)
    Reply to this Reply to original

  9. Middleware is a confusing term[ Go to top ]

    Too generic, too many claiments.

    EAI Vendors like Tibco and Webmethods also like to market themselves as middleware.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  10. CEO gossip[ Go to top ]

    I noticed two interesting things with regard to Marc's and Jonathan's articles:

    1) They do not bother to provide a definition of "middleware"

    The IT industry has widely different opinions about what constitutes "middleware". There are narrow definitions and wide definitions (e.g. by Gartner - I'm sure they have access to that) that even include databases. It's rather silly to assume that if you shout "middleware!" all of your audience has the same thing in mind. Probably even Marc and Jonathan have a different view on what constitutes "middleware". Makes the discussion a bit flawed, doesn't it?

    2) They suffer from tunnel vision

    Whatever definition of middleware you use, it stretches way beyond the J2EE realm. Long established products, like transaction monitors (CICS, Tuxedo), are definitely middleware, serve the largest transactional applications in the world, and are here to stay in the foreseeable future. Judging middleware to be "in" or "out" by just looking at J2EE developments is therefore incorrect.
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  11. CEO gossip[ Go to top ]

    I noticed two interesting things with regard to Marc's and Jonathan's articles:1) They do not bother to provide a definition of "middleware"The IT industry has widely different opinions about what constitutes "middleware".
    Try: http://middleware.objectweb.org/
    2) They suffer from tunnel visionWhatever definition of middleware you use, it stretches way beyond the J2EE realm. Long established products, like transaction monitors (CICS, Tuxedo), are definitely middleware, serve the largest transactional applications in the world, and are here to stay in the foreseeable future. Judging middleware to be "in" or "out" by just looking at J2EE developments is therefore incorrect.
    You're absolutely right. I forgot to talk about CORBA compliant projects: OpenCCM (http://forge.objectweb.org/projects/openccm/), CARDAMOM (http://forge.objectweb.org/projects/cardamom/), ... Enjoy.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  12. AOP is also infant[ Go to top ]

    I agree with Marc about AOP and it's place in middleware, but now, AFAK AOP is even more infant than middleware :) and current middleware will remain in the main stream for a long time.
    Reply to this Reply to original