Service-oriented middleware

Service-oriented middleware (SOM) aids Distributed Object Middleware (DOM) systems by the concept of services. A service in this context is a number of objects and their behavior. These objects use a predefined interface to make a service available for other systems/services. SOM defines communication protocols between services, and provides for location- and migration-transparent access to services, thus supporting a simple integration of services beyond platform boundaries. One example of a SOM is Sun's (now Oracle) Jini system (now the called Apache River project). Architectures belonging to the field of web services also belong to this category of middleware.