Who coined the term "Middleware"? I would like dated citations. Which
person or company first used it? What was that person or company's
definition of "middleware" when they coined it. Ican trace the term
back to the late 1980's, but even that early it already had many
meanings.

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 29 Oct 2003 12:08 PST

Believe it or not, I have traced the term back to 1970, with another
reference from 1972.  Both references contain definitions of
middleware.  I can't guarantee that even 1970 is the earliest year of
use, but I note that the 1972 reference calls it a "comparatively new
term".

If these references would be sufficient, please let me know.

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Clarification of Question by nickgall-ga on 30 Oct 2003 08:42 PST

In response to justaskscott's request for clarification, I am
"clarifying" my question as follows. I will accept as an answer to my
question any dated citation of the term "middleware" that includes a
definition of the term from before 1980 as an "original use" or
"coining" of the term.

Hello nickgall,

The Oxford English Dictionary Online (available through personal or
institutional subscription) provides, as its first two quotations:

"1970 A. CHANDOR et al. Dict. Computers 254 Middleware, computer
manufacturer's software which has been tailored to the particular
needs of an installation."

"1972 Accountant 27 Apr. 537/2 A comparatively new term 'middleware'
was  introduced because, as some systems had become 'uniquely
complex', standard operating systems required enhancement or
modification; the programs that effected this were called 'middleware'
because they came between the operating system and the application
programs."

"middleware"
OED Online [Oxford University Press]
available by subscription at http://dictionary.oed.com

The first citation is to "A Dictionary of Computers", a/k/a "The
Penguin Dictionary of Computers", edited by Anthony Chandor et al.

"The Penguin Dictionary of Computers (Penguin Reference Books)"
Amazon.co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/014051127X/qid=1067540389/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_0_2/026-8392499-8130832

"Displaying books where Author is Chandor, Anthony, Title is A
Dictionary of Computers"
BookFinder.com
http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&qi=OirDDTdbyRailuduqXthXDoEZVg_1594598467_2:1:3

The second reference appears to be to the London periodical "The
Accountant"., which you can find by searching major library catalogs,
especially in the UK, for the title "accountant".

- justaskscott-ga


Search strategy -

Searched on OED Online for:

middleware

Searched on Google and BookFinder for:

chandor "dictionary of computers"

Searched on library catalogs for:

accountant

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Request for Answer Clarification by nickgall-ga on 02 Nov 2003 02:31 PST

I need a little help deciphering OED references. Can I assume 254 is a
page number and 537/2 is an Edition/Page Number?

---

Clarification of Answer by justaskscott-ga on 02 Nov 2003 08:11 PST

I believe that "537/2" are page and column.  (I'm sure that "537" is
certainly not the volume, since the volume was something like 168 that
year.)  This accords with the OED's general convention of "arabic
numerals (42/1) for page and, where relevant, column."

"General explanations (continued) - part 5 of 5 - Main words
(continued)" [middle of page]
Oxford English Dictionary
http://www.oed.com/archive/oed2-preface/gen-main-5.html

Thanks for the nice comment and rating!

Though not the references themselves, I trust the OED citations to
such references. The answer also gave useful information in tracking
down the references themselves. An excellent value for $5. Much
thanks.

Hello nickgall,

I haven't been able to find a definite answer for you, hence I post
this as a comment.
Generally it seems the early 1990's is deemed to have been the
estimated date for the first usuage of this term, however there are
some alternative theories.
I have spent too long on this already without a clear date.  But
rather than let my research disappear into the ether I post it here
for your interest :)

"According to the IEEE Explorer Database, the first middleware article
was published in 1993 by Desal et al. [3]. Since than, the number of
articles increased to 7 in 1994 and to approximately 170 articles/year
in the next 3 years after 1988 (see Figure 1)"
http://www.ece.rochester.edu/~wheinzel/GroupWeb/papers/MiddlewareReview.pdf

"A SURVEY OF MIDDLEWARES"
"2.0 HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF MIDDLEWARES 3"
"According to John Charles’ article, the first true middleware
products were created in the early 1980s. Sun Microsystems®, Inc.
developed a product based on remote procedure call (RPC) protocol to
use with their Open Network Computing™ (ONC) system. This middleware
type program allows one program to request that another program (in
another computer) perform a task without having to be troubled about
the network particulars."
http://triton.towson.edu/~karne/research/middleware2.pdf

"In 1993, nobody would have recognized the term “middleware.” Today,
it is nearly 40 percent of the $230 billion software marketplace. 
It’s also what we bet our software business on in 1995, when we were
looking for IBM’s next growth opportunities"
http://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2001/decisions/dec_12.html

2003
"The term "Middleware" entered the IT lexicon a decade ago," 
http://www.tieturi.fi/koulutus/seminaarit/coco2003/ohjelma0611.asp

"With the early 1990s rise in client/server enthusiasm, the term
“middleware” was created to refer to a mixof innovations which were
intended to extend operating systems and programming tools to solve
some ofthe challenges of client/server computing."
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CNC9635.pdf


"(This was in 1991-2, before the term middleware was even coined.)"
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/kfeit/


"The term middleware was coined in the mid-1990s to describe the
software that facilitates integration between applications, and within
the components of a single application distributed across different
hardware."
http://mcgraw-hill.co.uk/he/web_sites/business/ecommerce/bandyo/ec_supps/exploring/ch06.html


"History of Middleware 
The term middleware first appeared in the late 1980s to describe
network connection management software, but did not come into
widespread use until the mid 1990s, when network technology had
achieved sufficient penetration and visibility. By that time
middleware had evolved into a much richer set of paradigms and
services offered to help make it easier and more manageable to build
distributed applications. The term was associated mainly with
relational databases for many practitioners in the business world
through the early 1990s, but by the mid-1990s this was no longer the
case [1,2]. Concepts similar to today's middleware previously went
under the names of network operating systems, distributed operating
systems and distributed computing environments. Cronus was the major
first distributed object middleware system (see Cronus), and Clouds
(See Clouds) and Eden were contemporaries. RPC was first developed
circa 1982 by Birrell and Nelson. Early RPC systems that achieved wide
use include those by Sun in its Open Network Computing (ONC) and in
Apollo’s Network Computing System (NCS)."
http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~bakken/middleware-article-bakken.pdf

Best regards (and good luck!)

THX1138

Hi, nickgall:

The comments by THX1138-ga ring true for me.  In my work we began
implementing a "middleware" approach to application development in
1995, but this grew out of earlier technology with a narrower focus,
connecting database clients and database servers over various network
platforms.

Oracle's SQL*Net was one of those technologies, but we went down two
other paths.  One was to build on the Sybase/Microsoft technology
which they called ODS (Open Data Services).  Microsoft had a couple of
code samples that pointed to using the ODS protocols to manage fairly
arbitrary "language events", corresponding to SQL commands in a SQL
Server context.

The other approach was a "home brew" based on local ideas that, in the
next five years or so, turned out to be more successful in terms of
our architecture development, perhaps because of rather than despite
its proprietary nature.

I think to provide a more definitive answer than what THX1138-ga has
given you, you would need to distinguish at least between the two
semantics.  The former is limited to Network OS provisioning for
client-server communications, while the latter is the key "business
logic" partitioning that got us out of the client-server "kitchen
sink" trap and into 3-tier architectures.

regards, mathtalk-ga

Thanks for the references thx1138-ga. They are new to me. I will check
them out. I've been periodically searching for a reference to an
original citation for a couple of years. Nada. Tons of mentions of the
general time of introduction -- late 1980s -- but nothing more. But
what I'm really curious about is the original scope of the term. For
example, was it only applied to C/S database access? I may raise the
price for the question soon if I don't get an answer. BTW, I apologize
for not responding earlier, but Google did not send me an email
notifying me of your comment. I thought my preferences enabled such
email notification. Not sure why I didn't get it. Thanks Again. --
Nick

Hello again nickgall,

Thanks for the note, and don't worry about the delay in replying :)
I think it unlikely that you will find the original source for the
term "Middleware" even if you raise the price.  The research I did was
pretty extensive and to not find a single source that claims to know
the origin of the term usually indicates that answer is unknown.  It
may be that the answer is just lost in the ether of cyberspace!

Just one other thought, if you want modern day definitions click the
link below.
http://www.onelook.com/?w=+middleware&ls=a

All the best

THX1138

Ok, I couldn't resist!

"So called middleware has been around for centuries with IBM starting
it all with their MQSeries product, and EDI software firms created
their own set of paradigms for implementing business to business
communications."
http://www.brabandt.de/html/eai_p2p_soap.html

and if we research the history of MQSeries we find that it was
launched in 1992, which ties in nicely with the dates from my previous
research......

"A Brief History of MQSeries 
1992 - Systems Strategies (SSI) develops ezBridge, a messaging and
queuing product for VMS, Tandem, and Unix"
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall00/G22.2631-001/conron.doc

But then........  ggrrrr  :(

"Middleware has been around since the 1960’s."
http://www.ic.uff.br/~vefr/research/clcomp/WhitePaper.pdf

I think the what has probably happened in regard to the 1960's quote
above, is that the term has been used retrospectively, ie. today
someone has recognised some software from the 60's and has recognised
it as being some kind of middleware even though the term was unknown
in the 60's.

It looks like IBM first used it with MQSeries, although I'm not 100%
certain that this is accurate.  However I hope it helps.

Very best regards

THX1138

What I like about the definitions that justaskscott came up with is
that they predate the "network-centric" definitions of Middleware. I'd
always assumed that Middleware was coined in the early days of
Client/Server to refer to the network-oriented software that linked
client and server. But in fact, the Accountant citation clearly
defines Middleware as any software between an application and an
OS--way before C/S and even before computer networks were prominent.
The Dictionary citation emphasizes customization ("tailored") of
generic software ("manufacturer's software") to "particular needs".
What this suggests to me is that Middleware is software that mediates
software, i.e., mediates between a software resource (network) or set
of resources (OS) and a software application.