Upward or downward compatible

The so-called compatibility refers to the degree of cooperation between several hardware, software, or software. The concept of compatibility is relatively broad. Compared with the hardware, there are several different computer components, such as the CPU, motherboard, and display card. If they work in a stable and cooperative manner, the compatibility between them is better, and vice versa.
Compared with software, one means that a software can work stably in an operating system, so the software is compatible with the operating system. In a multi-task operating system, if several software running at the same time can work stably without regular errors, the compatibility between them is good. Otherwise, the compatibility is poor. The other is software sharing. There is no need for complex conversions between several software, that is, they can easily share data with each other, also known as compatibility.

UpwardCompatible upward compatibility

Programs Written on lower-end computers can run on the same series of higher-end computers, or programs written in a lower-version environment of a platform can run in a higher-version environment, which is called upward compatibility. The former is hard-ware compatible, and the latter is software compatible. For example, all the software on Intel386 PC compatible machines can also run on 486 or higher models. Upward compatibility is of great significance. Some large-scale software development requires a great deal of work. If these software can be compatible, it does not need to be re-developed on other machines, this can save a lot of manpower and material resources.

Downward Compatible.

For software, backward compatibility means that higher programs can smoothly process data of lower programs. Taking the two Flash versions of the famous animation production software Flash 5 and Flash MX 2004, although the files saved in these two versions are. fla, the file content structure is different. Even so, Flash MX 2004 can still process fla files stored in Flash 5, so we can say that Flash MX 2004 is backward compatible.
However, considering the actual application, not all high-version software can accept the output of Low-Version Software. For example, assume that there is a software X, and suppose there is already version 10.0 (so fast !!), Therefore, the files output by X 1.0, which is no longer used by anyone in the old version, are unlikely to be read smoothly in version 10.0.