The diagram below shows how the Maltego Desktop Clients, the Transforms themselves, and the TDS fit together.
The TDS acts as the central server to which all Maltego Clients connect. It provides the configurations of the Transforms and custom Entities to the tool and directs Transforms that are being run to the right Transform server.
The code for the Transforms will be executed on the Transform servers, and the configuration for each Transform will be made on the TDS.
When a new set of Transforms is added to the Maltego Desktop Clients, the discovery process is initiated. The Client applications request the configuration from the TDS, and subsequently, add the new server to its internal list of Transform providers. The user can then install the Transforms through the Hub within Maltego, which will fetch the list of Transforms from the TDS and make them available for use within the tool.
When a Transform is run, the request is forwarded to the relevant TDS, which then forwards the request to the relevant Transform server.
The TDS sits between Maltego Desktop application and the Transform servers, directing a Transform request to the relevant Machine.