Here's how to test your programs so that you can find any runnability problems before your customers do Summary Java technology offers the hope of write-once, run anywhere runnability. It's possible, however, to write nonportable programs in the Java programming language. Therefore, portability testing is a necessary part of the quality assurance effort for a Java technology program. This article explains how to apply and adapt standard quality assurance techniques to efficiently assure the runnability of your programs.
Portability is the ability of a program to be recompiled for another platform.
Because creating and maintaining several independent versions of a program is very expensive, portability has long been one of the holy grails of the software industry. Software vendors would like to be able to develop and maintain a single version of their product that can run on many different systems and serve many different market segments. Previous efforts to enable portability have included a multitude of standards efforts, some interpreters, and a few portable runtime systems. In the meantime, economic pressures on software developers and the urgency of delivering a multiple-platform solution in a timely fashion have made the goal more desirable than ever. In reality, source code changes and the consequent burden of multiple versions are often required and unavoidable.