Overview of the InForm system architecture

The InForm software is a four-tiered software design.

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Note:: IBM Cognos is supported only for Cloud installations; it is not supported for on-premise installations.

Tier	Software component hosted on the tier	Description
Client	Web browser	Displays the pages of a trial and receives user input.
Web	Web server and gateway software (MS-IIS)	Services requests to and from the web browser.
Application	InForm Service	Handles trial-related requests for operating system services. There is one InForm Service per physical server machine.
	InForm trial application server	Logical server that acts as a transaction manager for InForm studies under the InForm Service. The InForm Server handles caching and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) packages. Each trial is associated with an InForm trial application server.
Data	Oracle database instances for:
	InForm trial database	Stores the trial components and the clinical data. Studies typically share an instance of Oracle with the InForm Admin database.
	InForm Admin database	Used by the InForm Service to manage all the studies on a physical machine. There is one InForm Admin database per InForm Service.