Portability:

Portability is a characteristic attributed to a computer application if it can run on an operating system other than the one for which it was developed without requiring a major rework. Porting software to a different operating system involves doing any work required to make the computer run in the new environment, such as resolving programming language differences, converting data, and adapting to new system procedures for running an application.

In general, applications that use standard application programming interfaces (APIs) such as the X/Open UNIX 95 standard C language interface are portable. Ideally, such applications can simply be compiled for the operating system to which they are being ported. However, if an application uses operating system extensions or special capabilities that are not present in the new operating system, these features must be replaced with comparable ones in the new operating system.

Porting software typically involves some work. However, the Java programming language and runtime environment makes it possible to develop applications that run on any operating system supporting 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 (such as a Web browser) running on another operating system without change. Chili!Soft ASP supports Java classes through Chili!Beans.

See also:

Using Java Objects and Classes in "Chapter 4: Building a Chili!Soft ASP Application"

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