Which maintenance activity involves updating software to work with new…

Software maintenance activities are classified by why a change is being made, not by what is changed. The four standard categories are corrective maintenance (fixing a defect discovered after delivery), adaptive maintenance (keeping software usable as its external hardware or software environment changes), perfective maintenance (improving functionality, performance, or maintainability in response to new requirements), and preventive maintenance (reworking code to remove a latent fault before it causes failure).

The scenario in this question is a change in the surrounding hardware or software environment — for instance, moving an application to a new operating system, database engine, or hardware platform — while the software's own logic has no known defect and gains no new feature. That is exactly the definition of adaptive maintenance: the software is updated purely to remain compatible with an environment that has changed around it.

• Corrective maintenance would apply if the software itself contained a bug or produced incorrect output — the scenario here involves no such defect.

• Perfective maintenance would apply if the change added new functionality or improved performance at a user's request — the scenario here involves no functional enhancement.

• Preventive maintenance would apply if a latent fault were being fixed before it could cause a failure — the scenario here involves no such latent-fault correction.

Since the change is driven solely by a shift in the external environment, adaptive maintenance is the correct classification.