What's the difference between "Layers" and "Tiers"?

Logical layers are merely a way of organizing your code. Typical layers include Presentation, Business and Data – the same as the traditional 3-tier model. But when we’re talking about layers, we’re only talking about logical organization of code. In no way is it implied that these layers might run on different computers or in different processes on a single computer or even in a single process on a single computer. All we are doing is discussing a way of organizing a code into a set of layers defined by specific function.

Physical tiers however, are only about where the code runs. Specifically, tiers are places where layers are deployed and where layers run. In other words, tiers are the physical deployment of layers.

Source: Rockford Lhotka, Should all apps be n-tier?

Read Scott Hanselman's post on the issue: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AReminderOnThreeMultiTierLayerArchitectureDesignBroughtToYouByMyLateNightFrustrations.aspx

Remember though, that in "Scott World" (which is hopefully your world also :) ) a "Tier" is a unit of deployment, while a "Layer" is a logical separation of responsibility within code. You may say you have a "3-tier" system, but be running it on one laptop. You may say your have a "3-layer" system, but have only ASP.NET pages that talk to a database. There's power in precision, friends.

Layers refer to logical seperation of code. Logical layers help you organise your code better. For example an application can have the following layers.

1)Presentation Layer or UI Layer 2)Business Layer or Business Logic Layer 3)Data Access Layer or Data Layer

The aboove three layers reside in their own projects, may be 3 projects or even more. When we compile the projects we get the respective layer DLL. So we have 3 DLL's now.

Depending upon how we deploy our application, we may have 1 to 3 tiers. As we now have 3 DLL's, if we deploy all the DLL's on the same machine, then we have only 1 physical tier but 3 logical layers.

If we choose to deploy each DLL on a seperate machine, then we have 3 tiers and 3 layers.

So, Layers are a logical separation and Tiers are a physical separation. We can also say that, tiers are the physical deployment of layers.