(12) United States Patent ao) Patent No.: us 6,366,876 Bi
Looney (45) Date of Patent: *Apr. 2,2002
FIGURE 1
(54) METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR
ASSESSING COMPATIBILITY BETWEEN
PLATFORMS AND APPLICATIONS
(75) Inventor: Kevin T. Looney, Sunnyvale, CA (US)
(73) Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US)
( * ) Notice: This patent issued on a continued prosecution application filed under 37 CFR 1.53(d), and is subject to the twenty year patent term provisions of 35 U.S.C. 154(a)(2).
Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days.
(21) Appl. No.: 08/939,756
(22) Filed: Sep. 29, 1997
(51) Int. CI.7 G06F 9/445
(52) U.S. CI 703/25; 703/26; 707/10;
717/11; 713/1
(58) Field of Search 395/500, 600,
395/680, 200.5, 712, 653, 654; 711/2, 100; 703/25, 26, 27; 707/3, 10; 717/17, 11; 713/1
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OTHER PUBLICATIONS
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* cited by examiner
Primary Examiner—Kevin J. Teska
Assistant Examiner—-Thai Phan
(74) Attorney, Agent, or Firm—-The Hecker Law Group (57) ABSTRACT
Embodiments of the invention can be used to assess whether a software application is compatible with an operating platform. A specification that describes the operating platform is generated using a definitional language. The specification identifies the programming resources of an operating platform. The application's dependencies and programming resources are identified. A compatibility engine is executed to resolve an application's dependencies to the specification. The output of the compatibility engine identifies whether the application conforms to the operating platform and how it deviates from the specification.
37 Claims, 14 Drawing Sheets
