Do tools associated to a particular formalism run on widely available platforms and on most of their current versions?

Main -> FAQ -> TOOL-PQAM-1


 * Theme: Known Strengths and Weaknesses of Tools and Tool Providers (TOOL)
 * Role: PQAM

Answer
The following tables illustrate some actively developed tools, as well as the implementation technologies (languages, frameworks) and the platforms on which pre-package binaries are available.

Although non exhaustive, the table shows the following trends:
 * most tools have pre-packaged binaries on all major OS: windows, major unix systems and MacOS (note that there might be 32bits and 64bits version with 32 bits versions generally running on 64 bits platforms but not always)
 * many tools also rely on JAVA with is cross-platform (using platform specific Java Virtual Machine). On top of JAVA, the Eclipse framework is widely adopted as user interface and integration framework
 * many tools rely on cross platform user interface frameworks like Qt, tcl/tk

Finally in the case of Open Source software, the code can generally also be rebuilt on a platform where there is no pre-packaged binary. This is however a more complex tasks and it also requires re-qualifying the tool by running non-regression test suites.

As a conclusion: globally, the availability is very good and the importance of this issue is less important with the ease to deploy virtual machines running the required OS and the likely move towards the Software as a Service (Saas) mode of operation.