Definitions

The Application: A packaged software system which is not changeable by anyone other than the vendor.

The Application Instance: A specific instance of The Application that someone desires to extend. We’ll say The Application as shorthand to mean “whatever application this user wants to extend.”

Application Environment: The network boundary for the application – the set of resources that can be considered “local” to the application.

Main Execution Process: The core computing boundary for the application. This is where the code developed by the vendor executes. To be able to execute logical code in this process is to have root access to the application.

Root Access: The lowest-level of access to an application, which gives code access to all resources and functionality. See What is "Root Access"?

Sandbox: A colloquial term for controlled access.

Environment Access: To be able to deploy file assets to a computing environment. This could be anything from FTP to Git, but it implies a level of tools, access, and knowledge beyond that of a simple user interacting with a UI.

Managed Asset: A file or string that is content-managed from the user interface. This is a resource that a user doesn’t have to have environment access to deploy – they can manage it from an authenticated UI, via a browser.

Application Start/Restart: The process of starting an application, which starts a computing process from source code, and normally re-reads all configuration values. For this reason, changes to configuration often require a “restart.”