software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

, a monolithic application describes a single-tiered

software application Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

in which the

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

and data access code are combined into a single program from a single

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

. A monolithic application is self-contained and independent from other computing applications. The design philosophy is that the application is responsible not just for a particular task, but can perform every step needed to complete a particular function. Today, some personal finance applications are monolithic in the sense that they help the user carry out a complete task, end to end, and are private data silos rather than parts of a larger system of applications that work together. Some

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

s are monolithic applications.Microsof
Three-tier Application
Retrieved on 3 August 2007 These applications are sometimes associated with

mainframe computers A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

. In software engineering, a monolithic application describes a software application that is designed as a single service. Multiple services can be desirable in certain scenarios as it can facilitate maintenance by allowing repair or replacement of parts of the application without requiring wholesale replacement. Modularity is achieved to various extents by different modularization approaches. Code-based modularity allows developers to reuse and repair parts of the application, but development tools are required to perform these maintenance functions (e.g. the application may need to be recompiled). Object-based modularity provides the application as a collection of separate executable files that may be independently maintained and replaced without redeploying the entire application (e.g. Microsoft "dll" files; Sun/UNIX "shared object" files). Some object messaging capabilities allow object-based applications to be distributed across multiple computers (e.g. Microsoft COM+). Service-oriented architectures use specific communication standards/protocols to communicate between modules. In its original use, the term "monolithic" described enormous mainframe applications with no usable modularity. This, in combination with the rapid increase in computational power and therefore rapid increase in the complexity of the problems which could be tackled by software, resulted in unmaintainable systems and the "

software crisis Software crisis is a term used in the early days of computing science for the difficulty of writing useful and efficient computer programs in the required time. The software crisis was due to the rapid increases in computer power and the complexity ...

References

Software architecture History of software {{soft-eng-stub

See also

References