Colloquy with my friend

I was traveling in a train  to my ancestral home this summer after completing my first year at VGSOM, IIT kharagpur.Surprisingly,I met one of my very close old friend inside the train compartment in which i was traveling.It was a tiresome re-union after many years. We had discussions on various aspects of our daily life so since i am a student now a days, it was quiet obvious that my subjects would be part of that discussion.

I am sharing an extract of that discussion which was on a very interesting topic known as "System Architecture".Here it goes -

Amit: Nikhil, as you know, I am very enthusiastic about computers. I keep a close watch on recent technological innovations. A couple of days ago; I came across a very interesting jargon while traversing an article in an IT journal. The article was on technological innovations that have led to efficient multitasking, multiprocessing and data management. The jargon was –“SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE”, can you give me some information about this term as I wasn’t able to understand this concept?

Me: Amit, System architecture is a very innovative concept that works on a principle which states that data must be logically distinct from the applications. There are many types of integrated systems that were developed on this concept in due course of time. The first one was single –tier integrated system. It separated the data from the applications even if they were on the same physical hardware so that they could be processed separately. This helped in improving the CPU utilization and processing time. Then came the two-tier architecture which is popularly known as Client-Server architecture these days. In this model, the data was kept on the server while the applications were kept on the clients. The client and server were connected through the LAN with TCP/IP protocol.

Amit: So can you brief me about certain advantages that this client-server architecture offers?

Me: Yes of course, one of the biggest advantages of client-server architecture is that it provides a convenient graphic user interface and also doesn’t place processing burden on the server when hundreds of users are connected to the system. There are certain disadvantages also like high bandwidth is required which slows down the application and regular maintenance of distributed software has to be done.

Amit : So has anything being done to counter these short comings ?

Me : Yes, there are multi-tier architectures available where the business logic is central and there are dedicated web servers to manage applications along with data servers. The clients act just like a web browser thus there is no need for specialist software at each end. Further, as big organizations are embracing IT, there are many new complex muti-tier systems coming into existence. Systems like ERP have fully automated the business scenario and are able to integrate all the functional areas together. For any special requirements such as business intelligence, data mining etc., there are special data warehouse servers that can be easily integrated with the ERP systems to achieve the desired operation.


Amit : Thanks a lot Nikhil for explaining me about this innovative concept. Now i can understand how all this huge data is processed and how all these web applications interact.