Question

Propose System Architecture for Software (Centralized, Decentralized, or Hybrid) and Hardware (Two-Tier or Three-Tier) for the following systems and provide justifications/explanations (4+4-8 marks) (CLOS: 3.4) A social networking mobile application (such as Instagram) saves posts, photos, and videos of the users and maintains their profiles. The website has two Applications servers and two database servers to do the processing and storing the data. The user can upload their posts and can browse other users posts.

Answer 1

The system will be having a hybrid architecture with two-tier architecture because the choice of hybrid architecture is done because in centralized database all the decision are made by one enitity and in decentralized database everyone can make their own decision and network is not owned by anyone like the bitcoin network but in this we will be using the hybrid database so that every one can have right to change or modify the data that is linked to them and all other can see it and here the data is owned by the company and people can access the data and the data is stored at centralized location or it can be at different physical location as the app will be using the cloud services and the choice of two tier architecture is because of the fact that the interface and presentation will be running on the clients machine and data layer will be stored on the server. this is best because the user will be easily able to interact with application without high speed connection because only the data needs to transfer not the whole page.