Who Should Read This Guide?

The UNIX Application Migration Guide was written with two groups in mind: first, Corporate Information Officers (CIOs), Information Technology (IT) directors, data center managers, and senior engineers assessing an organization s UNIX migration options; and second, the developers tasked with making such a migration a reality.

The first few chapters examine the planning and practical issues involved in migration or coexistence between UNIX and Windows. These chapters discuss whether a move to Windows is the best choice for your organization, and review the different ways to carry out such a migration. If you are an IT decision maker, chapters 2 through 6 cover your area of primary focus.

Subsequent chapters have sections for both UNIX and Windows programmers. If you are a UNIX programmer, you will see how you can adapt your code so that it can be recompiled to run in a Windows Win32 or native UNIX Interix environment. If you are a Windows programmer, you will learn about how you can port UNIX functions to Windows and how you can ease the process of rewriting an application within the Microsoft Win32 API framework. Chapters 8 through 14 contain detailed information targeted to the developer audience.

Finally, Chapter 7, which covers tools and technologies, and Chapter 15, which discusses future migrations, include content of interest to both audiences.

Prerequisite Knowledge

Because this guide is aimed at two separate audiences, knowledge prerequisites can differ depending on chapter. Chapters 2 to 7 assume a strong familiarity with planning and executing major infrastructure projects that intrinsically carry an enhanced level of risk.

Chapters 8 to 14 assume a detailed knowledge of either the UNIX environment or the Microsoft Win32 environment. This includes familiarity with the C, C++, or Fortran languages and syntax and the ability to write new code or to analyze and adapt existing code to fit the migration or coexistence scenario.