What Is Infrastructure Layer?

The infrastructure layer is like the foundation of a house. It's what makes the whole thing work—but it's not the only thing that makes it work. The infrastructure layer is the underlying framework that enables a software system to interact with external systems by receiving, storing and providing data when requested. It's like a house: if you're building a home, you must have a solid foundation before building. You can't just make it on top of sand! It would be best if you had something that could support the weight of your house—and the same goes for software systems. You don't want them crashing down because they didn't have enough support underneath them. The infrastructure layer is an essential part of any software system because it enables you to connect with external systems like databases, web services and so on—but it isn't the only component involved in connecting with other systems. For example, suppose you were building a customer relationship management (CRM) system for a telecom services provider. In that case, you might also want to connect with an external system that provides information about smartphones and data plans available for customers so that your company can make recommendations based on the customer's needs. The infrastructure layer is a critical component of every three-tier architecture. Why? Since it manages all the system-to-system interactions and the data external to the system. You can think of it like this: when building a house, you need strong walls to hold up your roof and keep out bad weather. The infrastructure layer is that wall that holds things together in your software system. It's also known as the persistence layer because it stores data permanently. The infrastructure layer regularly interacts with the data access layer and can manage queries written to interact with the data access layer in three-tier architectures.