What are different compatibility and intersystem defects?

WHAT IS MEANT BY SOFTWARE COMPATIBILITY?

- Software compatibility is usually described as the compatibility of a software system or application to run without any problems on any major platform.
- It means that the software system or application is compatible with the major platforms and CPU architectures such as Intel or mercury etc.
- It also refers to the compatibility of a software system with different operating systems.
- It is very difficult to develop software that is compatible with many CPU architectures since during the compilation of such a system it shows different errors for the different CPU architectures.
- But such compatible application software do exist.
- The applications are developed and compiled for the various CPU architectures and these are then made compatible to with the various different CPU architectures via the operating systems.

WHAT IS INTERPRETED SOFTWARE?
- In contrast to the compiled software, the interpreted software does not show the above drawback.
- They are very well capable of running on multiple CPU architectures.
- But here one condition has to be fulfilled i.e., the interpreter should be available for that particular type of the CPU architecture.

Software incompatibility is more frequent among the newer software versions developed for the new versions of the operating system which is found to be incompatible with the older version of that software system or application version due to a lack of some features and functionalities.

The newer versions of a software system or application that are able to work with the older versions of the operating systems are said to possess the capability of the backward compatibility.

Compatibility testing is usually carried out to test the operational environment of a software application or program. The software system or application is checked for its suitability i.e., whether or not the application will be able to perform in that environment or not.

DIFFERENT COMPATIBILITY & INTER-SYSTEM DEFECTS
Defects affecting the compatibility of a software system or application are commonly called as compatibility and inter-system defects. These are:

DEFECT #1:
After completing the installation of the application software, the user executes that application and observes that he/she is not able to access some features and functionalities and also not able to view any pictures images, icons or data.

DEFECT #2:
Some browsers may show java script errors with applications developed in java language.

DEFECT #3:
Inconsistency is observed in some elements of a web application or a web site when viewed through different browsers.

DEFECT #4:
The software program is observed to behave differently on different browsers.

DEFECT #5:
Inter-system defects like corruption of data in an NFS mounted file. Usually data is not corrupted in an NFS system.

DEFECT #6:
- In some cases, an unauthorized user is very well able to access the control to a system which uses the LDAP methodology for the authentication purpose.
- This inter-system defect is common in ensemble, UNIX clients and VMS employing LDAP authentication system, windows clients and cache file versions.

DEFECT #7:
- Encryption of data base in VMS clusters.
- In such a defect the system usually becomes inactive and does not respond.
- Like the above mentioned defect, this defect also exists in ensemble versions. - This defect usually occurs when the data base is forced to shut down without the cache being closed.

DEFECT #8:
Failure of cluster mounted data bases.

DEFECT #9:
- Defect making the application server unresponsive.
- This defect is usually encountered when there is too much ECP traffic on the application or web site.
- This defect can affect all platforms.

DEFECT #10:
- Memory defects like core dumps which are generated during the start up of the cache.
- Because of this defect in some cases the start up can fail completely.

DEFECT #11:
Speed reduction in cache making it unresponsive. This defect occurs mainly when the amount of shared memory exceeds a specified limit.