Portability is a characteristic attributed to a computer program if it can be used in an operating systems other than the one in which it was created without requiring major rework.
Porting is the task of doing any work necessary to make the computer program run in the new environment. In general, programs that adhere to
standard program interfaces such as the X/Open
UNIX 95 standard
C language interface are portable. Ideally, such a program needs only to be
compiled
for the operating system to which it is being ported. However, programmers using standard interfaces also sometimes use operating system
extensions or special capabilities that may not be present in the new operating system. Uses of such extensions have to be removed or replaced with comparable functions in the new operating system. In addition to language differences, porting may also require data conversion and adaptation to new system procedures for running an application.
Portability has usually meant some work when moving an application program to another operating system. Recently, the Java programming language and runtime environment has made it possible to have programs that run on any operating system that supports the Java standard (from Sun Microsystems) without any porting work. Java applets in the form of precompiled bytecode can be sent from a server program in one operating system to a client program (your Web browser) in another operating system without change.
Contributor(s): Jelani Brandon
This was last updated in November 1997
Dig Deeper
-
A sneak peek at Storage magazine's August 2011 issue. Learn more about the state of backup deduplication, storage virtualization and new trends in data storage.
-
A sneak peek at Storage magazine's July 2011 issue. Learn more about backing up virtual servers, performance tips and how to turn your data center storage into a storage cloud.
-
Download Storage magazine's all-digital issue at no cost. This month: The benefits, functions, future outlook and buying considerations for automated tiered storage technologies.
-
People who read this also read...
-
Resources from around the Web