Yes, there is a definition of middleware in the context of distributed systems by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. In his book "Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms" co-authored with Maarten van Steen, middleware is described as the distributed system layer that enables communication between distributed systems. It masks the heterogeneity of the operating system, hardware, and network layers, providing a uniform computational model for use by the programmers of servers and distributed applications. In a more general sense, middleware can be seen as the software layer that sits between the operating system and the applications running on it, managing resources and offering services to efficiently share and deploy those resources across a network. Middleware is to a distributed system what an operating system is to a computer: a manager of resources offering its applications to efficiently share and deploy those resources across a network.
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