working on applications and technology

What is middleware, the definition has changed a lot since the appearance of the term!

In Oracle 's definition, There 're only database, middleware and applications, if something is neither database nor applications, Then it must be middleware.

It is an interesting definition but It surely reveal what middleware is.

Database is to store and mange data, Applications is built for some kind of buisness purpose, and middleware, as the name emphasize, is the whole stack between the data and the business applications.

The Oracle middleware

Oracle has aquired many company and products in recent years, these products belong to different category of database, middleware and applications.

For the middleware category, a well-known company is BEA, a leading middleware company with the famous product weblogic. has also been aquired by oracle last year.

All of these aquisitions, has bring many products into Oracle and is now the foundation of Oracle fusion middleware 11g.

The word 'fusion' , I think , might have implication of extracting different product from all of these aquired products. To form the 'best of breeds' product suite. for example, the application server is using the previous BEA Weblogic; While for business intelligence, Oracle is now using the combination of the previous Siebel analytic and some of the hyperion product suite.

Fusion middleware 11g components

Fusion middleware include the following components:

• Development tools
• Application Server (based on the previous Weblogic)
• SOA
• Business Intelligence
• Portal and social computing
• Content management
• Identify management

An notable fact about the fusion middleware is :

Oracle is not only provide middleare infrastructure to customer and partners, Oracle is also using the fusion middleware to develop Oracle 's applications.