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1.1.1 Points of view Referring to Table 1-1, the firmware for the hard disk is called by the VIO Server, and from the perspective of the hard disk, that is the application calling the firmware. A firmware developer would provide an application programming interface for its applications, and would not care that the device is being plugged into and accessed by a VIO Server rather than, say, a RAID controller or a SAN. As long as the application communicates with the firmware using the correct programming interface, all will be well. In the same way, from the perspective of the operating system, the "application" running on it is the Java Virtual Machine (JVM ). It is immaterial to the operating system that the JVM is running a large and complex Java application (WebSphere Application Server), or that there is Java code running inside JEE containers inside the Java application. From the perspective of the Java Virtual Machine, its "application" is the WebSphere Application Server. From the perspective of the WebSphere Application Server, its "application" is the servlet or other JEE constructs deployed inside it. And so on it goes. As you can see, the definition of "application" depends on the perspective.

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