TechTalks Event
Where Are We with Middleware?
with guest expert Ken Klingenstein
March 25, 1999
Audio
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Tips)
"Middleware" is the way we try to control the complexity of the environments that we're developing. It's one of these embracing terms for all of the glue that links applications to the basic operating systems and underlying infrastructure of the institution. Middleware takes the individual instances of descriptors of who-you-are and what-you're-allowed-to-do and your personalized information, and middleware takes this from individual instances to an enterprise-wide service. In doing so, it provides you with your needed personalized information, hopefully regardless of location—hopefully regardless of what workstation you're at, what system you're using. It tends to tie things together. Is it time for you to know more about middleware?
Guest Expert
Our
Guest Expert for this event is Ken Klingenstein, the Director
of Information
Technology Services at the University
of Colorado at Boulder. Ken, a member of CREN's Board of Trustees, has been active in national and regional
networking since 1985, serving as a member and former Chair of the
Federal Networking Council Advisory Committee (FNCAC), member of the
Board for Farnet, now Net@Edu
and as co-founder of Colorado Supernet, among others. He has testified
before Congress on topics in networking. He was formerly on the
Board of Directors for CAUSE (now consolidated with Educom as EDUCAUSE)
and serves on the Coalition
for Networked Information's Steering Committee. He regularly
presents papers and seminars to many professional networking and
computing groups.
Background and resources
Background and resources include a recent HTML slideshow by Ken on the topic which you can find on Howard Strauss's website. In June of 1998, Ken did a related "TechTalk with the Experts" session entitled Middleware: Authentication, Authorization, and Directory Issues. The transcript and audio files of that session are available on CREN's website. Among other, related issues, Ken discusses the middleware needs for technology enhanced education in the CAUSE/EFFECT article entitled The Technical Realities of Virtual Learning: An Overview for the Non-Technologist.
