Description
Modern operating systems such a Microsoft Windows and Linux can include limited application virtualization. For example, INI file mappings were introduced with Windows NT to virtualize, into the registry, the legacy INI files of applications originally written for Windows 3.1. Similarly, Windows Vista implements a shim that applies limited file and registry virtualization so that legacy applications that try to save user data in a read-only system location that was writable by anyone in early Windows, can still work.
Full application virtualization requires a virtualization layer. Application virtualization layers replace part of the runtime environment normally provided by the operating system. The layer intercepts all file and Registry operations of virtualized applications and transparently redirects them to a virtualized location, often a single file. The application remains unaware that it accesses a virtual resource instead of a physical one. Since the application is now working with one file instead of many files and registry entries spread throughout the system, it becomes easy to run the application on a different computer and previously incompatible applications can be run side-by-side. Examples of this technology for the Windows platform include AppZero, BoxedApp, Cameyo, Ceedo, Evalaze, InstallFree, Citrix XenApp, Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization, Endeavors Technologies Application Jukebox, Microsoft Application Virtualization, Software Virtualization Solution, Spoon (former Xenocode), VMware ThinApp and P-apps.
Read more about this topic: Application Virtualization
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)