The Future Of Middleware


Advanced Middleware Services

 (Courtesy of www.nwc.com)

These advanced services are not yet common in middleware products, database-specific or more generic. Still, the functionality will be increasingly required by new enterprise applications.

Single System Login -Missing from many database connectivity solutions is any separate authentication service. Without any security service tied into an enterprise scale directory service, users have to log into each RDBMS server separately. This means they'll either forget usernames and passwords (and call IS support all the time) or they'll breach security by keeping a list of everything on paper taped up on their monitor. Database administrators have to add a username and password to each server independently. If you remember NetWare 3.x bindery support, and how it required the administrator to do everything on each server independently, you'll have the flavor of how this works in the middleware market. Too many usernames and passwords is not a good idea. More advanced middleware solutions let the user log in once and only once to the middleware's security, which in turn handles authentication from there on using that credential. That security may or may not be the same system used in a file and print environment.
Enhanced Security -Some middleware vendors have security options much better than just usernames and passwords. Look for support of card key solutions like SecureID's products. Oracle announced it was working with a fingerprint reader vendor. Beyond these access security solutions, however, don't forget to see that authentication information is passed over the network encrypted. You may even want data encryption for sensitive data.
Location Transparency -Many middleware solutions don't offer a simple name service for their server or service names. If the user wants to connect to a server and can't remember the name of it, they'll have to call tech support. Advanced middleware solutions offer centralized naming services with some level of distribution. The issues are the same as those associated with DNS on the Internet or NDS on NetWare. A new frontier in middleware support for naming is in supporting more dynamic configurations, where redundant services must be targeted with load balancing and fault tolerance. Few products in the database arena are so sophisticated, but the push is on in the more general middleware market where high availability of redundant components is required.
Database Oriented Services (Heterogeneous Joins, Replication)-In the database connectivity world, other services may be offered by middleware. One important service is heterogenous join support. If the middleware does a multi-RDBMS join transparently, then the client itself doesn't have to worry about the problems of handling differences and enhancing performance.
Application Oriented Services (Transaction Monitoring, Queuing) -For more generic middleware environments, different application services may be required, incluing transaction monitoring and message queueing. These services are so critical that they really define different interaction mechanisms for distributed applications (see our middleware typology discussion).
Management (Configuration, Performance, Accounting) -It would be nice if a complex system like an enterprise middleware solution could be easily and effectively managed. Some products are beginning to hook into SNMP consoles, but more vendors are now offering products to monitor the health of their middleware networks specifically including third parties like BMC Software and Tivoli Systems. There's still no substitute for a Sniffer occasionally, however.
Interaction With Other Network Services -While some middleware does provide its own set of advanced services, a better approach may be to offer support for external enterprise services that migth already be in use in the organization. By supporting other vendors services (security, directory, management), middleware can fit into the existing enterprise networking environment much more easily. It can leverage other systems to function more efficiently.
SQL Server makes a good though proprietary example of how to hook in to enterprise services. The whole DCE world provides another. Part of Microsoft's BackOffice application server suite, SQL Server interacts with Microsoft Windows NT's domain directory for authentication services. The approach provides a server-side single login support. The user logs in once to the NT domain and never has to log in again to any BackOffice resource separately. This is a more effective approach than just caching passwords at the client, which Windows can do but many database middleware vendors don't support either, since there is only one username and password the user might ever have to change. Oracle has announced support for a variety of other services, including Banyan StreetTalk, Novell NetWare NDS, and DCE services. Sometimes, however, this support is not available on all platforms; Oracle7's NetWare NDS support is only available on the Oracle NetWare NLM server, and not for other more popular platforms.