The Software Management Function includes management of a system for delivery of software and also management of software within a system. There are two aspects of software that need to be considered separately. These two aspects can be described as the "dormant" view and the "active" view of software. The dormant view of software is related to the data that is stored in a managed system and the way in which it is delivered and installed. In general, the data is stored information, such as data files and tables, but may also be files containing executable code. The scope of this Recommendation | International Standard includes the dormant view of software. The active view of software is related to the management of resources that utilize the software. There is no real difference between this view and the normal view of management of resources. The scope of this Recommendation | International Standard does not include the active view of software. However, the relationship between managed objects representing resources that utilize software, and the managed objects representing the software that they are using (i.e. dormant view of software) is within the scope of this Recommendation | International Standard. The scope of this Recommendation | International Standard includes: — initiation of transfer of software; — post transfer control of software; — software activation (includes version update and patching); — software de-activation; — software reversion change; — software validation; — software enquiry; — software backup; — software restore. NOTE 1 — Backup and restore are defined in a generic way so that they can apply to resources other than software. The scope of this Recommendation | International Standard does not include: — transfer mechanism of software; — physical storage of software (mapping of software to physical file store, such as to a floppy disk, hard disk, etc.); — formatting of software; — naming of software products; — sequencing of software management commands; — software monitoring; — management of processes running in a system. NOTE 2 — The support for license charging activities (i.e. billing, accounting) and software tracing (i.e. tracing execution of software for debugging) is outside the scope of this Recommendation | International Standard and is open for further study.