Emerging application architectures are multitiered featuring thin clients requiring no application installation or support, application servers that manage the business logic, and data sources on various platforms. A key ingredient to make multitier applications adaptable to rapid changes will be a middleware, component-based architecture. A major challenge for application developers will be understanding the pieces of the middleware puzzle in order for their applications to incorporate good business decisions and practices.

At this months meeting, Beth Gold-Bernstein, IllumiSys Corp , will explain the major concepts of distributed, component based, multitier architecture and highlight the issues application developers will need to be aware of. Application architectures of the future will be distributed and integrated. Furthermore, they will be component-based in order to quickly adapt to rapid changes in business and technology. The goal of this architecture is to allow new applications to be easily assembled from prefabricated components. These components may be purchased components or applications, "wrapped" legacy applications, and custom-built ones. They may reside on different technology platforms within and outside the organization. Properly designed, a component-based architecture will easily integrate legacy, current, and emerging technology.

Enabling seamless integration and communication among these components requires an extensive infrastructure or middleware architecture to connect the multitier application. This emerging middle-tier middleware is called various names: transaction server, application server, component server, and business rules server. Regardless of the name, terminology, or technology used in the current vendor solutions, the same set of services is required to deliver the full functional abilities of a distributed component architecture. These abilities include scalability, adaptability, recoverability, and manageability.

For a more detailed overview of the distributed component, middleware architecture visit http://www.dbpd.com/9802feat.htm and attend the May meeting.

This meeting of the Worcester Section - Computer Society, held in conjunction with the Delphi Developers Group of Greater Boston, will be held on Monday, May 18th, from 7:00 to 9:00 at Pencil Pushers - Tax Software, 10 New England Executive Park, Burlington, MA. For additional information contact Al Reinhart, DisCom Systems at 508-869-6417 or reinhart@DisCom.com.