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A computing platform, digital platform, [1] or software platform is the infrastructure on which software is executed. While the individual components of a computing platform may be obfuscated under layers of abstraction , the summation of the required components comprise the computing platform .
It provides a platform (hardware abstraction layer) to run high-level system software and application software. A kernel is the core part of the operating system that defines an application programming interface for applications programs (including some system software) and an interface to device drivers.
Software quality assurance and security are critical aspects of software development, as bugs and security vulnerabilities can lead to system failures and security breaches. Additionally, legal issues such as software licenses and intellectual property rights play a significant role in the distribution of software products.
The operating system provides an interface between an application program and the computer hardware, so that an application program can interact with the hardware only by obeying rules and procedures programmed into the operating system. The operating system is also a set of services which simplify development and execution of application programs.
A software system is a system of intercommunicating components based on software forming part of a computer system (a combination of hardware and software). It "consists of a number of separate programs, configuration files, which are used to set up these programs, system documentation, which describes the structure of the system, and user documentation, which explains how to use the system".
In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally designed for (e.g., different CPU, operating system, or third party library).
Machine-dependent software is software that runs only on a specific computer. Applications that run on multiple computer architectures are called machine-independent, or cross-platform . [ 1 ] Many organisations opt for such software because they believe that machine-dependent software is an asset and will attract more buyers.
An operating environment is not a full operating system, but is a form of middleware that rests between the OS and the application. For example, the first version of Microsoft Windows , Windows 1.0 , was not a full operating system, but a GUI laid over DOS albeit with an API of its own.