Middleware is a (loosly defined) term for any software or service that enables the parts of a system to communicate and manage data. It is the software that handles communication between components and input/output, so developers can focus on the specific purpose of their application.
In server-side web application frameworks, the term is often more specifically used to refer to pre-built software components that can be added to the framework's request/response processing pipeline, to handle tasks such as database access.
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General knowledge
- Middleware_(distributed_applications) on Wikipedia
- Middleware on Wikipedia