Deploy n-tier

In the following sections we'll explore the many options and configuration settings available to you as you configure and deploy an n-tier application.

In an n-tier DevForce application, the client tier communicates with an EntityServer on a separate application server tier, and the application server in turn communicates with the data tier.

The client tier

The typical DevForce n-tier client is a smart .NET UI such as a Silverlight, Windows Store, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), or Windows Forms application, but it might also be a console application, a Windows Service, or an ASP.NET application.  

We discuss configuration and deployment of Silverlight and other client application types separately.

The application server tier

The Entityserver is responsible for accessing data sources and helping to secure your application. The  EntityManager in the client application makes requests to the EntityServer whenever querying (when the query can't be satisfied from cache) or saving entities, and to call custom service methods.

The EntityServer is implemented as several Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services and can be deployed in different ways.

The data tier

We don't really have much to say about your database(s) and leave its configuration to you and your DBA.  You should consider security, however, both in terms of connection information stored in connection strings, access accounts, and transmission security.  DevForce imposes no special requirements on the data tier.