I listened to a webcast from JBoss World today with a group of people. After hearing several speakers announce new middleware products and initiatives (as JBoss is the leading force in open source middleware), one of them turned to me and asked, “Just what is middleware?” When I started to describe transaction servers and database connection pool sharing, she held up a hand and said, “No. I want to know what it is in real world terms, and why it’s a big deal.”