This tutorial positions the most popular forms of middleware, discussing the programming model, flexibilities, strengths and weaknesses of each. Nevertheless, none of the middleware approaches is held to be preferred, instead each is presented with it's own strengths and weaknesses. Some design patterns are presented to guide typical usages. General middleware scalability implications are discussed, including performance, load balancing, fault tolerance, connection management, and so on. The sum of the middleware selected will allow integration inside a company's systems, between companies, and across firewalls, that is across the edge of the network.
Case studies form an important part of the tutorial.
Speaker Bio Sean Baker Sean Baker is a founder of IONA Technologies. His original experience in distributed computing was gained as a faculty member in the Distributed Systems Group, Department of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin. Within Trinity, he worked on many projects, designing and implementing support environments for distributed object systems, and also their relationships to databases and persistence in general. In 1991 he co-founded IONA Technologies to exploit this experience. Sean is IONA's Chief Technology Officer, and is responsible for IONA's product vision.