The impact of research on the development of middleware technology

Emmerich, W., Aoyama, M. and Sventek, J. (2008) The impact of research on the development of middleware technology. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 17(4), pp. 1-48. (doi: 10.1145/13487689.13487692)

Abstract

The middleware market represents a sizable segment of the overall Information and Communication Technology market. In 2005, the annual middleware license revenue was reported by Gartner to be in the region of $8.5 billion. In this article we address the question whether research had any involvement in the creation of the technology that is being sold in this market? We attempt a scholarly discourse. We present the research method that we have applied to answer this question. We then present a brief introduction into the key middleware concepts that provide the foundation for this market. It would not be feasible to investigate any possible impact that research might have had. Instead we select a few very successful technologies that are representative for the middleware market as a whole and show the existence of impact of research results in the creation of these technologies. We investigate the origins of Web services middleware, distributed transaction processing middleware, message-oriented middleware, distributed object middleware and remote procedure call systems. For each of these technologies we are able to show ample influence of research and conclude that without the research conducted by PhD students and researchers in university computer science labs at Brown, CMU, Cambridge, Newcastle, MIT, Vrije, and University of Washington as well as research in industrial labs at APM, AT&T Bell Labs, DEC Systems Research, HP Labs, IBM Research, and Xerox PARC we would not have middleware technology in its current form. We summarise the article by distilling lessons that can be learnt from this evidenced impact for future technology transfer undertakings.

• Item Type: Articles
• Keywords: Software engineering, software architectures, operating systems, communications management, database management, systems, programming languages, language constructs and features, the computer industry, history of computing
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sventek, Professor Joseph
• Authors: Emmerich, W., Aoyama, M., and Sventek, J.
• Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Research Group: ENDS
• Journal Name: ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology
• Journal Abbr.: ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol.
• Publisher: ACM
• ISSN: 1049-331X
• ISSN (Online): 1557-7392
• Copyright Holders: ACM