What Is A Tier?

Think of a tier as a logical separation of components in an application or a service. And when I say separation, I mean physical separation at the component level, not the code level.

What components means?

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

These are the different components that make up a web service.

Single Tier Applications

A single-tier application is an application where the user interface, backend business logic & the database all reside in the same machine.

Typical examples of single-tier applications are desktop applications like MS Office, PC Games or an image editing software like Gimp.

Advantages Of Single Tier Applications

• no network latency since every component is located on the same machine. This adds up to the performance of the software.
• no data requests to the backend server every now and then, which would make the user experience slow. In single-tier apps, the data is easily & quickly available since it is located in the same machine.
• the data of the user stays in his machine & doesn’t need to be transmitted over a network. This ensures data safety at the highest level.

Though it largely depends on how powerful the machine is & the hardware requirements of the software, to gauge the real performance of a single-tier app.