What are the best characteristics of a middleware platform?


What are the best characteristics of a middleware platform?

Yahoo! Pipes is my idea of a perfect cloud based middleware.  The problem is that the performance is not enterprise grade.  I would be happy to pay a reasonable amount for a premium Pipes service with better performance.  I’m not clear on the distinction between cloud based middleware and visual IDE.  Yahoo! Pipes has both web service and YQL modules providing for a high level of customizations.  It also has regex modules for infinite variety of processing.  Further, Pipes outputs in numerous formats, including json, csv, html, etc.  I’m doing a wide variety of things with Pipes, way beyond just processing feeds.  I can refer you to my recent survey of “Artificial Intelligence Middleware” [1].

[1] http://www.meta-guide.com/home/artificial-intelligence-middleware