Mumbai University > Computer engineering > Sem 7 > Software Architecture.

Marks: 5 M

Year: May14, Dec11

• Middleware often constraints applications the way architecture frameworks do. It induces how an application’s functionality is broken up into components and how those components interact. In this sense, middleware can induce an architecture or architectural style on an application.
• Architecture implementation frameworks are forms of middleware. There is a subtle difference in the way they emerge and develop. Frameworks evolve based on a particular architectural style that developers want to use.
• An example of how middleware can influence application architecture is CORBA. CORBA breaks an application into objects that may reside on different hosts. Objects that are a part of the application expose their own services through provided interfaces whose method signatures are specified in an interface definition language (IDL). Objects look up other objects through services such as naming services and then call each other using a request response pattern, passing only serializable parameters across the interface boundaries.
• If system stakeholders choose distributed objects style for their application, a CORBA-like middleware will serve an ideal architecture framework. Presented with an application design, choosing the architectural style is one of the most important decisions. The services are provided by many middleware technologies and often the capabilities of many middleware system influences the decision making process.