Middleware - Other Examples of Middleware

Other Examples of Middleware

The term middleware is used in other contexts as well. Middleware is sometimes used in a similar sense to a software driver, an abstraction layer that hides detail about hardware devices or other software from an application.

• The Android operating system uses the Linux kernel at its core, and also provides an application framework that developers incorporate into their applications. In addition, Android provides a middleware layer including libraries that provide services such as data storage, screen display, multimedia, and web browsing. Because the middleware libraries are compiled to machine language, services execute quickly. Middleware libraries also implement device-specific functions, so applications and the application framework need not concern themselves with variations between various Android devices. Android's middleware layer also contains the Dalvik virtual machine and its core Java application libraries.
• Game engine software such as Gamebryo and Renderware are sometimes described as middleware, because they provide many services to simplify game development.
• In simulation technology, middleware is generally used in the context of the high level architecture (HLA) that applies to many distributed simulations. It is a layer of software that lies between the application code and the run-time infrastructure. Middleware generally consists of a library of functions, and enables a number of applications—simulations or federates in HLA terminology—to page these functions from the common library rather than re-create them for each application.
• Wireless networking developers can use middleware to meet the challenges associated with wireless sensor network (WSN), or WSN technologies. Implementing a middleware application allows WSN developers to integrate operating systems and hardware with the wide variety of various applications that are currently available.
• The QNX operating system offers middleware for providing multimedia services for use in automobiles, aircraft and other environments.
• Multimedia Home Platform (DVB-MHP) is an open middleware system standard designed by the DVB project for interactive digital television. The MHP enables the reception and execution of interactive, Java-based applications on a television set.
• Universal Home API, or UHAPI, is an application programming interface (API) for consumer electronics appliances, created by the UHAPI Forum. The objective of UHAPI is to enable standard middleware to run on audio/video streaming platforms via a hardware-independent industry standard API.
• The Miles Sound System provided a middleware software driver allowing developers to build software that worked with a range of different sound cards, without concerning themselves with the details of each card.
• Radio-frequency identification software toolkits provide middleware to filter noisy and redundant raw data.
• ILAND is a service-based middleware dedicated to real-time applications. It offers deterministic reconfiguration support in bounded time.