Shared-Nothing

Distributed Computing architecture where each node is independent and self-sufficient, and there is no single point of contention across the system... People typically contrast SN with systems that keep a large amount of centrally-stored state information, whether in a Data Base, an Application Server, or any other similar single point of contention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_nothing_architecture

Three popular web development technologies, PHP, Django, and Ruby On Rails, all emphasize an SN approach, in contrast to technologies like J2EE that manage a lot of central state.