Middleware for software leasing over the Internet

MMM (Middleware for Method Management) is an infrastructure for managing the deployment, integration, distribution, and use of application services via the World Wide Web. Application services may range from a simple database access to a fully fledged application package. MMM propagates a software leasing paradigm, as opposed to the classical software licensing model. Applications reside and execute on the software provider’s platforms, managed through the MMM middleware. Users interact with the application services through a standard Internet browser, not requiring any additional software. This relieves user from software installation, maintenance, and upgrading overhead, while always offering the most recent software release. The MMM client component offers users a virtual file space, application service composition functions, execution support, and visualization features. These functions are all available through an Internet browser. The MMM implementation is based on standard Web technologies, such as HTML, XML, and MetaHTML; distributed object computing frameworks, such as CORBA; and database technology, such as ODBC. In this paper we give a technical account of the MMM architecture and discuss its primary features.