Back-end is the behind-the-scenes part of a software application that handles the business logic, data storage and processing. It's the unsexy plumbing that makes the flashy front-end actually work, like the kitchen staff at a trendy restaurant cranking out the orders while the hipster servers take all the credit.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I'd love to add that slick new feature to the app, but the back-end is such a mess of spaghetti code that it'll take weeks of refactoring just to make it possible."

• "Our back-end is built on a serverless architecture using AWS Lambda and DynamoDB, which is great until you hit the concurrency limits and everything grinds to a halt."

If you actually want to learn more...

• Presentation Domain Data Layering - Martin Fowler explains the common practice of separating an application into presentation, domain logic, and data access layers.

• Reporting Database - Fowler discusses the benefits of using a separate database optimized for reporting and analytics, rather than hammering your main back-end database.

• Using CockroachDB to Reduce Feature Store Costs by 75% - DoorDash explains how they used a mix of database technologies in their back-end to optimize efficiency and simplify operations for their machine learning platform.

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