A monolithic architecture is where processing, data and the user interface all reside on the same system.

Mainframe computers used a monolithic architecture with considerable success. Monolithic architectures implemented on DOS and earlier Windows based PCs often worked poorly with multiple users. This performance degradation is mainly due to poor mechanisms for record locking and file handling across local area networks. A 1990 Honeywell-Bull DPS 7 mainframe CPU Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for mission critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and financial transaction processing. ... The acronym DOS stands for disk operating system, an operating system component for computers that provides the abstraction of a file system resident on hard disk or floppy disk secondary storage. ... Microsoft Windows is a range of operating environments for personal computers and servers. ... One of the first PCs from IBM - the IBM PC model 5150. ... A local area network (LAN) is a computer network covering a local area, like a home, office or small group of buildings such as a college. ...