IEEE 1003.0-1995

This guide provides Definitions of the concepts of application portability, application interoperability, data portability, and user portabilityDescriptions of services needed in the areas of application portability, application interoperability, data portability, and user portabilityA survey of existing standards that address these objectivesIdentification of those areas where formal standards do not exist and discussion of near-term strategies for filling these gapsGuidance on assembling these standards into profiles This guide includes no mandatory requirements.

This guide describes the POSIX Open System Environment (POSIX OSE). It is intended to be used by anyone interested in using standards to construct an information processing system, including consumers, systems integrators, application developers, systems providers, and procurement agencies. The scope of this guide is much broader than a single standard. This guide identifies standards from many different areas produced by many different organizations. The POSIX OSE is intended to be broad enough to cover the entire scope of general-purpose information processing systems. While the intent of this guide is to identify completely the user services for a general-purpose information processing system, it is acknowledged that this will take some time, and this version of the guide may be incomplete in areas that are still evolving. It is important to note that this guide is not a base standard itself; it merely identifies standards that might be used when constructing a complete information processing system. It is not appropriate to claim conformance to this guide because it contains no mandatory requirements. This guide is intended to be used only as a source of reference material. Although this guide is a product of the IEEE POSIX standardization efforts, its scope is much broader than those efforts. IEEE POSIX is currently developing base standards and standardized profiles focused primarily on application programming interfaces. At the end of the introduction is a cross-reference of the POSIX standardization efforts and where they fit into the POSIX OSE. For a more detailed discussion of POSIX profiling projects, see Section . The process of selecting standards for a particular application domain is called profiling. Recommendations for the production of different types of profiles are included in this guide. It may never be necessary to implement an information processing system that provides an implementation of every standard in the POSIX OSE. In addition to listing and categorizing existing standards efforts, this guide identifies important services that standards have not yet addressed. In areas where these services are not addressed, emerging standards efforts and existing public specifications are described. These emerging standards and public specifications are not part of the POSIX OSE. They are included in this guide to identify some of the existing work that has been done in areas that are gaps in the POSIX OSE. This guide does not promote the use of these specifications that are outside the POSIX OSE. They are included for information purposes only. User needs and standards to meet those services are continuously expanding. As such, this guide will need regular revision to incorporate new user services and the new standards that evolve to meet those user needs.

New IEEE Standard - Inactive-Withdrawn. This guide presents an overview of open system concepts and their applications. Information is provided to persons evaluating systems based on the existence of, and interrelationships among, application software standards, with the objective of enabling application portability and system interoperability. A framework is presented that identifies key information system interfaces involved in application portability and system interoperability and describes the services offered across these interfaces. Standards or standards activities associated with the services are identified where they exist or are in progress. Gaps are identified where POSIX¨ Open System Environment services are not currently being addressed by formal standards. Finally, the concept of a profile is discussed with examples from several application domains.