Question

As a website developer, you are to give a talk to a group of investors who are keen on investing in your business. In your talk you are to

a. Explain the problems faced by the traditional two-tier client-server architecture in web development   

b. Discuss how these problems were overcome with the three-tier client-server architecture.   

c. Explain how their investment would yield much dividend and propose and explain extensively any two risk that are likely to reduce their profit (9 marks)

Answer 1

a.

A two-tier architecture is based on client-server architecture. There’s no presence of a helping hand between these both. Client sends a request and the server responds to it.The drawbacks include –

Due to the direct communication, involvement of more users will lead to less performance. Even using a huge hardware to handle this isn’t sufficient. Hence it can't handle large number of multiple requests at once.

b.

This architecture has three different layers namely the Logic layer, User Interface Layer, and the Data Layer. All the operations/changes performed on each layer are independent of each other. It has 3 tiers –

Data Tier:

It has a database where data is stored and retrieved from.

Application Tier:

It’s responsible for all the logic and operations.

Presentation Tier:

It has user interface which shows the user all the data.

The problems in 2 tier are overcome in 3 tier by –

Performance rate is high as all the tiers are independent of each other.

Load is balanced

Flexibility is increased

Modification and maintenance is easy

c. Choosing 3 tier architecture will lead to many advantages, where the website can be worked upon by everyone and it’s also reliable and popular. Proper development with good teamwork would lead to a good development of website and hence profit would be met.

Two of the risks include:

Security – There can be attacks on the database or in any tier, hence it’s risky but can be prevented with proper measures taken.

Loss of Data – This is a very serious risk as the entire data is necessary, providing a backup and following proper steps will avoid this as well.

There should always be a backup plan for any of the risks, that’s how everything can be intact.

comment for any further doubts!