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A Software Stack is comprised from a set of Software Subsystems or Components connected together to create a complete Platform. Once defined, a Software Stack is self-contained and requires no additional subsystems or components to support applications. Applications are said to run on or run on top of the resulting Software Stack.

For example, to develop a web application, the architect defines the stack as the target Operating System (OS), Web Server, Database, and Programming Language environment.

Another version of a Software Stack is operating system, middleware, database, and applications. Regularly, the Components of a Software Stack are developed by different developers independently of one another and are integrated together and single named entity, forming the basis for many systems. For example:

• Apache CloudStack
• LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python)
• Oracle Cloud Stack
• Web Service Protocol Stack

See also Solution Stack

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_stack