what is middleware ?

[mark stone]

what exactly is middleware ?
i am reading an aricle and it says that servlets and rmi are middleware.
i thought that servlets were server side based.
so what exactly is middleware ? does middleware mean like middle between the client and server paradigm that we know of ? something mid way between a client and server ?

[Andres Gonzalez]

hhmmm.... I noticed you posted the same topic under the servlet forum. Michael said that if you are using Servlets or RMI as a "bridge" between HTML front-end and back end systems, then you can consider these technologies as middleware.
Some people say that middleware is the "/" in client/server architecture. is usually a layer that sits between the client and the server.
middleware:
Software that mediates between an application program and a network. It manages the interaction between disparate applications across the heterogeneous computing platforms. The Object Request Broker (ORB), software that manages communication between objects, is an example of a middleware program

cheers