Portability Concepts

Portability is the ability to run a program on more than one system platform without modifying it. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is a portable environment. This chapter presents considerations and guidelines for porting objects between systems.

Standards that affect the development of relational database systems are determined by:

• ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard

• X/OPEN (European body) standard

• ISO SQL standard

Ideally, industry standards enable users to work identically with different relational database systems. Each major vendor supports industry standards but also offers extensions to enhance the functionality of the SQL language. In addition, vendors constantly release upgrades and new versions of their products.

These extensions and upgrades affect portability. Due to the effect of software development on the industry, applications need a standard interface to databases-an interface that will not be affected by differences among database vendors. When vendors provide a new release, the effect on existing applications needs to be minimal. To solve portability issues, many organizations have moved to standard database interfaces, called open database connectivity (ODBC).