Introduction

I’ll begin the course by discussing the different tiers involved in the software architectural landscape. This is like having a bird’s eye view of the software architecture realm and it is important to be understood well.

This chapter will help us understand:

• What is a tier?
• Why do software applications have different tiers?
• How do I decide how many tiers my application should have?

What is a tier?#

Think of a tier as both logical and physical separation of components in an application or a service. This separation is at a component level, not the code level.

What do I mean by components?

• Database
• Backend application server
• User interface
• Messaging
• Caching etc.

These are the components that make up a web service.

Now let’s take a look at the different types of tiers and their real-life examples.