Friday evening I got a call from my dear friend Anish. He was curious about how is my life in Praxis Business School.
ME: Hello
ANISH: Hey!! How are you friend?? How is life over there?
ME: Life is good, loving the classes and the hostel life. How are you doing?
ANISH: Even am good!! So what is so interesting in your classes?
ME: Everything!! For instance today I learnt a lot about SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE. It’s all about how the huge Data is stored in our world, how the whole networking structure is running.
ANISH: It sounds interesting, please explain it to me.
ME: Sure!! Let’s start with the definition.
System Architecture tells us about how the various hardwares like laptops, desktops etc are interlinked between each other including software applications that are used on same or different platforms.
ANISH: Can you please elaborate on what are platforms?
ME: Platform is the combination of hardware & operating system, while application is a piece of software that runs on a particular platform, as for example, Adobe Reader is a software and the pdf files it helps us to read is the data.
Now moving on to the types of System Architecture: -
- Single Tier
- Two Tier
- Three Tier
- Multi - Tier
SINGLE TIER: - In single tier both database and application are on the same platform as in our personal desktop and laptop. For Example spreadsheet software and the data for the spreadsheet both lie on the same machine.
TWO TIER: - In a Two tier architecture the data is separated from the application and stored on a different Platform. The client receives the data from a single platform which is common for all. After processing of the data the new data is stored in a new machine called server which is common for all. These clients are connected to the server through a single network. Here there is less chance of redundant data.
ANISH: Does it have any disadvantage?
ME: Yes. The speed of accessing the data decreases as the number of users increases.
ANISH: Ok, continue.
ME:
THREE TIER: - The application is partitioned and kept centrally in the Three tier architecture. So the business logic is kept central location while the presentation logic is kept locally in each system. The user interfaces are connected to the application and data through network. The major operations like calculation are done in the central location while the user interfaces can browse the data, transact and give feedback. Here the business application should be web enabled.
ANISH: Can you give an example of well designed three-tier application?
ME: An ERP product – SAP or Oracle business suite, which is used in a large number of corporations.
MULTI TIER: - It is same as a Three tier architecture only there is a web server in addition to the data center and business application and there are web browsers for user inter phase. The web server and browser are connected to each other using internet. Multi-tier application architecture provides a model for developers to create a flexible and reusable application. By breaking up an application into tiers, developers only have to modify or add a specific layer, rather than have to rewrite the entire application over. There should be a presentation tier, a business or data access tier, and a data tier.
ANISH: Is this safe and secure?
ME: Yes it is safe as we have firewalls who act as gatekeepers between the public internet and company’s local area network.
ANISH: Wow!! This system sounds to be very good. I learnt a lot about this system. Thank you very much!!
ME: Pleasure is all mine.
