Patent ID: 8185884

Claim:
A method of updating a software application, the method comprising: obtaining updation-related information from the software application and an operating system in which the software application runs while the software application is in an online mode; writing the updation-related information to a first set of files of a virtual machine (VM) image while the software application is in the online mode; reading the updation-related information from the first set of files of the VM image while the software application is in an offline mode; using the read updation-related information to update the software application while the software application is in the offline mode; writing post-updation files to a second set of files of the VM image using the updating-related information read from the first set of files while the software application is in the offline mode; and writing an updation completion flag to a file on the VM image, wherein while the software application is in a second online mode subsequent to the offline mode the operating system reads the post-updation files from the second set of files of the VM image and the software application reads the flag from the VM image.