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A novel distributed middleware service platform, called MidGate platform, is presented in this paper. The central contribution is description of the developed MidGate platform and its architecture focusing especially on the adaptation, context-awareness, and personalization of mobile and pervasive services. The research problem addressed is how to facilitate the development of interoperable applications and services into heterogeneous and distributed service gateway based environments. A requirement analysis of future mobile and pervasive services and key technologies has been carried out to establish a solid base and requirements for the development of the MidGate platform. The key mechanisms supporting adaptation, context-awareness, and personalization of applications and services are presented. The novel middleware architecture solution of the MidGate platform utilizing these key mechanisms is also described. The MidGate architecture utilizes the emerging Generic Service Elements (GSE) approach, where generic and collectively utilizable services are provided to applications as middleware services that are part of a service platform. The main contribution of this research is the definition of a set of GSEs, the related MidGate platform architecture and its evaluation. The evaluation of the MidGate platform has been carried out in series of laboratory prototypes. The evaluation indicates that the MidGate platform solution is well applicable in various service gateway-based distributed systems and extends well into resource-constrained mobile environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]