I've seen quite a few developer job postings recently that include a sentence that reads more or less like this: "Must have experience with N-Tier architecture", or "Must be able to develop N-Tier apps".
This leads me to ask, what is N-Tier architecture? How does one gain experience with it?
It's my understanding that N-Tier separates business logic, client access and data from each other using separate physical machines. The theory is that one of them can be updated independently of the others.
It's a buzzword that refers to things like the normal Web architecture with e.g., Javascript - ASP.Net - Middleware - Database layer. Each of these things is a "tier".
It's based on how you separate the presentation layer from the core business logic and data access (Wikipedia)
3-tier means Presentation layer + Component layer + Data access layer. N-tier is when unneccessary layers are added beyond these three and it's labeled with a buzzword so it doesn't seem like your architects are a bunch of crack monkeys. I say this based on the N-tier architecture I have to work with.