posted 14 years ago
Hi,
I myself had the same confusion while preparing for the exam. As we are dicussing Manageability (which is entirely different from Maintainability), a two tier system will be easily manageable than a N-tier system. According to the definition for manageability, "It is the ability to ensure the continuous health of the system". So, in a 2 tier system, only one tier(server) to manager whereas in N-Tier, there are various tiers. But from other perspective, since multi-tier architecture can be clustered, each machine/tier can be individually tuned and managed as other system can support as standby for the machine being maintained. In that sense, N-Tier architecture can be visualized as more maintainable.
At the end, i will stick with the examiner's perspective as like everyone i want to impress the examiner and pass the exam.
Cheers,
Kuppusamy.V.,
SCJP1.4, SCBCD 1.3, SCWCD 1.4, SCEA 5, JLPT-N3
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