Sandboxing protects "live" servers and their data, vetted source code distributions, and other collections of code, data and/or content, proprietary or public, from changes that could be damaging to a mission-critical system or which could simply be difficult to revert, regardless of the intent of the author of those changes.
Sandboxes replicate at least the minimal functionality needed to accurately test the programs or other code under development (e.g. usage of the same environment variables as, or access to an identical database to that used by, the stable prior implementation intended to be modified; there are many other possibilities, as the specific functionality needs vary widely with the nature of the code and the application[s] for which it is intended).
The concept of sandboxing is built into revision control software such as Git, CVS and Subversion (SVN), in which developers "check out" a copy of the source code tree, or a branch thereof, to examine and work on.
Microsoft,[4] Google, Amazon,[5] Salesforce,[6] PayPal,[7] eBay,[8] and Yahoo,[9] among others, provide such services.
An edit preview mode is usually used instead to test specific changes made to the texts or layout of wiki pages.