Patent 7478435 was granted and assigned to Sony on January, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An application program comprises a plurality of 1st application elements each having a plurality of versions. In this case, the versions are managed by using version management data each used for managing relations between a plurality of 2nd application elements each corresponding to one of the versions and the 1st application elements, and by using management data for managing relations between the 1st application elements and the version management data. As a result, it is possible to provide a data-processing apparatus capable of properly restricting users setting application programs in a server for security reasons.