Australian Government Architecture Reference Models Version 3.0

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8.4.1 [3101] Support Platforms
Support platforms are hardware or software architectures. The term originally dealt only with
hardware and it is still used to refer to a CPU model or computer family.
Service Standards Defines Examples
310101
Wireless/Mobile
310102
Platform Independent
310103
Platform Dependent
The radio transmission via
the airwaves. Various
communications
techniques are used to
provide wireless
transmission including
infrared ‘line of sight’,
cellular, microwave,
satellite, packet radio and
broad spectrum.
The description of the
operating systems that are
able to execute and run
on any platform or
operating system. A
platform is the underlying
hardware and software
comprising a system.
The description of the
operating systems that are
able to execute and run
on a specific platform or
operating system. A
platform is the underlying
hardware and software
comprising a system.
Australian Government Architecture Reference Models Version 3.0
An example of wireless/mobile technology includes:
� Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME): Sun’s Java
environment for devices. It promises a relatively
portable environment for those using Java for other
tiers of the architecture.
Examples of platform independent technologies include:
� Hypervisor: also called a virtual machine manager, is
a program that allows multiple operating systems to
share a single hardware host.
� Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE): Sun’s
J2EE and Microsoft’s .Net are the two dominant
distributed computing architecture frameworks. J2EE
provides portability of a single language (Java) over
multiple operating systems and hardware platforms
� Linux: an open source operating system that runs on
multiple hardware platforms. With the ability to run on
many platforms, including the PC and Macintosh, Linux
has become an alternative to proprietary systems.
� Eclipse: a collection of open source projects built on
the Equinox OSGi run-time.
Examples of platform dependent technologies include:
� Windows: Microsoft family of operating systems for
personal computers.
� Mac OS: Apple’s UNIX-based operating system based
on industry standards.
� Net: Microsoft’s .Net and Sun’s J2EE are the two
dominant distributed computing architecture
frameworks. The .Net framework supports a wide
range of languages but is primarily tied to the Microsoft
Windows operating system and Intel hardware