Glueware refers to solutions or platforms designed to integrate different software and systems that contain related resources seamlessly. They allow multiple solutions and systems to work together regardless of their developer or vendor, version, or type.

When you think of glueware, you can compare it to glue that can connect various things no matter what each is made of. An example would be gluing a metal figurine to a wood shelf so it won’t fall off even when an earthquake hits.

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Glueware is designed to make different applications work together without glitches.

What Are the Characteristics of Glueware?

With glueware’s help, even solutions and systems that aren’t compatible can work together. How? Here are some reasons:

  • They use open Internet standards that support several technologies and communication protocols.
  • They perform all inter- and intra-application communication and processing over the Internet.

What Are Some Examples of Open Internet Standards?

Open Internet standards are those available to the public. They are developed or approved and maintained through a collaborative and consensus-driven process. All the standards’ developers must agree to how they are created and modified.

Examples of open Internet standards are:

  • System: World Wide Web architecture specified by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
  • Hardware: Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) standardized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), now known as “Industry Standard Architecture (ISA),” Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), and Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP).
  • File format: Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) for 2D vector graphics, raster graphics, and text defined by International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 8632; Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) that is used to create and maintain technical documentation defined by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS); and HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Extensible HTML (XHTML), and HTML5 for structured hyperlinked document formatting.
  • Protocols: Connected Home over Internet Protocol (IP) to enable compatibility among different smart home and Internet of Things (IoT) products and software; IP for transmitting packets of data on a network; and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) that transports messages between devices.
  • Programming languages: ANSI C, a general-purpose programming language; Ada, a multi-paradigm programming language; and MUMPS, a dynamically typed programming language.

Probably one of the most commonly used open standards is Portable Document Format (PDF). Users, regardless of their computer’s operating system (OS), can open PDFs using Adobe Reader that they can download and install free of charge.

Another example would be Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files, which users can open on any imaging application, such as Photos on Windows or Preview on macOS.

Glueware makes all that possible. Regardless of type, glueware should make different systems, hardware, file formats, protocols, and programming languages work seamlessly with one another.

What Are the Benefits of Using Glueware?

Using glueware provides several advantages, including:

  • They make real-time collaboration of local applications and Web services possible.
  • They can automate processes, even those that employ disparate software and systems.
  • They can lower costs since organizations don’t have to replace incompatible applications just to make them work with others.
  • They can enhance product lifecycle management (PLM) by prolonging an application’s or device’s usage. Even outdated solutions and platforms will continue to work with new ones.

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Glueware refers to unified computing and communication systems bundled or glued together within a single solution.

Whatever kind of glueware an organization uses, it should make intra- and inter-application communication and processing possible.

Key Takeaways

  • Glueware refers to solutions or platforms designed to integrate software and systems with related resources seamlessly.
  • Glueware uses open Internet standards that support several technologies and communication protocols.
  • Glueware performs all inter- and intra-application communication and processing over the Internet.
  • Glueware makes the real-time collaboration of local applications and Web services possible.
  • Glueware can automate processes, even those that employ disparate software and systems.
  • Glueware usage can lower costs since organizations don’t have to replace incompatible applications just to make them work with others.
  • Glueware can enhance PLM by prolonging an application’s or a device’s usage. Even outdated solutions and platforms will continue to work with new ones.