J. Jeffrey Hanson

Jerry Kramer is claimed to have said, “that if he ever had to go on the lam from the law, he’d become an offensive lineman.” Such is the unfortunate plight for the poor souls who wallow in mud and anonymity each game as they slug it out to open holes for high-profile running backs and to protect fragile, all-important quarterbacks.

Middleware has seemingly turned into the offensive lineman of enterprise development. Nobody wants to acknowledge its importance, yet without it, front-end clients and back-end data are left alone to slug it out in the mud unprotected. Whenever I am asked to evaluate an enterprise system for refactoring, the number one request always seems to be to design a middle-tier that can provide access to the fragile, all-important data across multiple protocols from any high-profile application-tier framework.

PHP and Ruby on Rails have recently taken center stage to dance in the endzone in front of the cheapseats with everybody calling them the primary candidates for the all-star team. However, I wonder – will there be a clamor soon to retrofit a middleware offensive line into the mix to push these celebrities forward to the playoffs?