One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that uses middleware to transmit data from a first system to a second system. During operation, centralized middleware receives a request from a user to transmit the data from the first system to the second system, wherein the centralized middleware comprises a set of middleware agents which interact with the user on behalf of a set of associated middleware. Upon receiving the request, the centralized middleware uses a middleware agent to transform the data from a first data format associated with the first system to a second data format associated with the second system. The centralized middleware then sends the transformed data to the second system. In this way, the centralized middleware hides the technical details of how the data is manipulated from the user.