PHILIPPINE STATE COLLEGE OF AERONAUTICS

INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER STUDIES

Learning Module 03: Middleware

MID-TERM

LEARNING MODULE 3

SYSTEMS INTEGRATION APPROACHES

IS 412
SYSTEMS INFRASTRUCTURE & INTEGRATION

Prepared by:

DR. GLENN C. CARO

Associate Professor
PHILIPPINE STATE COLLEGE OF AERONAUTICS
INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER STUDIES
Learning Module 03: Middleware

Middleware
Source: Next Generation Application Integration

What is Middleware?

 Middleware is any type of software that facilitates communication between two or more
software systems
 Can be a simple communication connection between applications
 Can be as sophisticated as information sharing and logic execution mechanisms
 Middleware is a technology that allows us to move information between multiple enterprises

Middleware Models

There are two types of middleware models

1. Logical middleware model

 Depicts how information moves throughout the enterprise conceptually
2. Physical
 Depicts both the actual method of information movement and the technology employed

Point-to-Point Middleware

 Point-to-point middleware uses a simple pipe to allow one application to link to another
application
 Provides point-to-point connection between a source and a target application
 Disadvantages
 Inability to bind more than two applications
 Lacks the ability to house application logic
 Lacks the ability to change messages as they flow through the pipe

Many-to-Many Middleware

 Links many applications to many other applications

 Can deal with more than two source or target applications
 This capability make it the best option for application integration
 It provides flexibility and applicability to the application integration problem domain

Synchronous vs Asynchronous

 Asynchronous middleware moves information between one or many applications in an

asynchronous mode
 i.e., the middleware software is decoupled from the source or target applications
 Applications are not dependent on other connected applications for processing.
 Application can always continue processing, regardless of the state of the other applications
 Synchronous middleware is tightly coupled to applications
 The applications are dependent on the middleware to process one or more function calls at
a remote application
PHILIPPINE STATE COLLEGE OF AERONAUTICS
INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER STUDIES
Learning Module 03: Middleware
 Calling application must halt processing to wait for the remote application to respond
 Asynchronous is preferred over synchronous application integration solution
 Synchronous middleware faces problems such as network or remote server problems
 Therefore, the application has to stop processing
 Synchronous middleware eats up bandwidth because several calls must be made across the
network in support of a synchronous function call

Communication Models

 Connection-oriented communication
 Two parties connect, exchange messages, and then disconnect
 Typically synchronous process, but it can be asynchronous
 Connectionless communication
 Calling program does not enter into a connection with the target process
 Receiving application simply acts on the request, respond if required
 Direct communication
 Middleware layer accepts the message from the calling program and passes it directly to
the remote program
 Usually synchronous in nature
 Fire and forget
 This model allows the middleware user to “fire off” a message and then “forget” about it,
 without worrying about who receives it or even if the message is ever received
 The purpose of this model is to allow a source or target application to broad cast specific
type of messages to multiple recipients

Communication Model: Queued communication

 Generally requires a queue manager to place a message in a queue

 The remote application then retrieves the message, either shortly after it has been sent, or at
any time in the future
 Receiving application need not be active when calling the application sends the message
 Does not block either remote or calling application from proceeding with processing

Communication Model: Publish/ subscribe

 Frees an application from the need to understand anything about the target application
 Publisher is the provider of the information about a topic
 Publisher sends the information it desires to share to any interested applications (subscribers)
 Publisher does not need to understand anything about applications that are interested in the
information

Communication Model: Request response

PHILIPPINE STATE COLLEGE OF AERONAUTICS
INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER STUDIES
Learning Module 03: Middleware
 As the name implies, a request is made to an application using request-response middleware,
and it responds to the request
 Includes any middleware that can facilitate a response from a request between applications,
such as integration servers or application servers

Types of Middleware

 RPC
 Message-oriented middleware (MOM)
 Distributed objects
 Database-oriented middleware
 Transactional middleware
 Integration servers

Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)

 Oldest type of middleware

 Provide the ability to invoke a function within one program and have that function execute
within another program on a remote machine
 RPC are synchronous
 i.e., RPC must stop the execution of the program
 They also require more bandwidth than other types of middleware RPC
 Advantage of RPC is its simplicity of mechanism and programming
 Disadvantages are its huge performance cost and inability to scale

Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM)

 MOM is queuing software that uses messages as a mechanism to move information from point
to point
 MOM uses the notion of messages to communicate between applications,
 Direct coupling with the middleware mechanism and the application is not required
 MOM relies on an asynchronous paradigm
 This allows the application to function independently
 i.e., continue processing after making a middleware service request
 Message is dispatched to a queue message, which ascertains that message is delivered to
its final destination.
 Messages returning to the calling application are handled when the calling application finds
the time
 Managers are easy to manage using MOM as it has structure (schema) and content (data)
 MOM can be thought of as a one-record database that moves between applications
through message-passing mechanisms
 MOM supports two communication models
 Point-to-point
 Message queuing (MQ)

Distributed Objects
PHILIPPINE STATE COLLEGE OF AERONAUTICS
INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER STUDIES
Learning Module 03: Middleware
 Small application programs that use standard interfaces and protocols to communicate with one
another
 Provide mechanisms for application development, providing enabling technology for the
enterprise, or enterprise-wide method sharing
 There are two types of distributed objects in the market today
1. Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
2. Component Object Model (COM)

Database-Oriented Middleware

 Facilitates communication with a database, whether from an application or between databases

 Can be used as a mechanism to extract information to extract from either local or remote
databases
 Works with two basic database types – Call-level interfaces (CLI)
 Common APIs that span several types of databases, providing access to any number of
databases through a well-defined common interface
 Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
 Native database middleware

Transaction-Oriented Middleware

 Provides a mechanism for coordination of information movement and method sharing between
many different resources
 Provides tightly coupled integration
 Requires changes with source and target applications
 Based on the concept of transaction
 A unit of work with a beginning and an end
 Application logic is encapsulated within a transaction
 A transaction either completes or is rolled back completely
 Two types of transaction-oriented middleware
1. TP monitors
2. Application servers

TP Monitors

 Provide a mechanism to facilitate the communication between two or more applications as well
as a location for application logic
 Provides scalability by sharing and processing transactions among other connected TP monitors
 Provide connectors to databases, other applications, and queues
 These connections require some application development in order to communicate with
these various resources
 Once connected these resources are integrated into the transaction and leveraged as part of the
transaction
 As a result, can recover if a failure occurs
 Provides two services
 Guarantee the integrity of transactions
 Resource management and run-time management services
PHILIPPINE STATE COLLEGE OF AERONAUTICS
INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER STUDIES
Learning Module 03: Middleware
 TP monitors greatest performance value is in their load-balancing feature
 Allows them to respond gracefully to a barrage of transactions
 As demand increases, the transaction manager launches more server processes to handle
the load even as it kills processes that are no longer required

Application servers

 Provide application logic sharing and processing and for connections to back-end resources
 Resources such as databases, ERP applications, and even traditional mainframe applications
 Provide user interface mechanisms
 To deploy applications to the web platform

Integration Servers

 Facilitates information movement between two or more resources and can account for
differences in application semantics and platforms
 Without any application necessarily understanding anything about other applications it
shares information with
 Can also join many applications by using common rules and routing engines
 Can transform the schema and content of the information as it flows between various
applications and databases
 Can broker messages between two or more source or target systems

Tough Choices

 RPCs are slow, but their blocking nature provides the best data integrity control
 Updates are always applied in the correct order
 Asynchronous layer to access data may seem to be the best solution, as it does not block
processing
 But there is no way to guarantee that an update will occur in a timely manner
 Messaging could provide better performance because the queue manager offers sophisticated
performance-enhancing features as such as load balancing
 Presence of easy-to-use interface will take the power of middleware and place it in hands of the
business user
PHILIPPINE STATE COLLEGE OF AERONAUTICS
INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER STUDIES
Learning Module 03: Middleware
HONESTY CLAUSE

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and uphold standards of intellectual and academic integrity. Philippine State College of

Aeronautics assumes, as a basic and minimum standard of conduct in academic matters, that

students should be honest and that they submit for credit only the output/accomplishment of

their own efforts.”

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