A database quality that means that successfully completed transactions must persist (or be recoverable) in the case of a system failure
EDI
Electronic Data Interchange, an early database communication system
ETL
Extract-Transform-Load, any method for extracting all or part of a database and storing it in another database
Enterprise Search
Searching access-controlled, structured and unstructured data found within the enterprise
ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning
Evolutive Data Model
Model that can be easily extended with new fields or data types without rebuilding the entire data structure
Facet
A dimension of meaning that can be used for restricting search, for example shirts and coats are two facets that could be found on a shopping site
Field
A labeled part of a document in a search engine. Fields can be typed to contain text, numbers, dates, GPS coordinates, or categories
Firewall
A computer-implemented protection that isolates internal company data from outside access
File server
A service that provides sequential or direct access to computer files
Full-text engine
A system for searching any of the words found in documents, rather than just a set of manually assigned keywords
Garbage collection
A process for recovering memory, usually by recognizing deleted or out-of-date data
Gartner
An information technology research and advisory firm that reports on technology issues
GPS
Global Positioning System, a system of satellites for geolocating a point on the globe
Hash table
Hashing converts a data item into a single number, and the hash table maps this number to a list of items
Heuristics
Methods based more on demonstrated performance than theory, weighting words by their inverse frequency in a collection is an example
HTTP
HyperText Transfer Protocol, an application layer protocol for accessing web pages
IDC
International Data Corporation, a global provider of market intelligence and analysis concerning information technology
ILM
Information Lifecycle Management
IMAP
Internet Message Access Protocol, a format for transmitting emails
Index, inverted
A data structure that contains lists of words with pointers to where the words are found in documents
Index slice
One section of an inverted index which can be distributed over many different computer stores
Intranet
A secure network that gives authorized users Web-style access to an organization’s information assets (e.g., internal documents and web pages)
IR
Information Retrieval, the study of how to index and retrieve information, usually from unstructured text
IS
Information System, a generic term for any computer system for storing and retrieving information
Isolation
The database constraint specifying that data involved in a transaction are isolated from (inaccessible to) other transactions until the transaction is completed to avoid conflicts and overwrites
IT
Information Technology, a generic term covering all aspects of using computers to store and manipulate information
JDBC
Java Database Connectivity, a Java version of ODBC
Join
In a relational database, gathering together data contained in different tables
JSON
JavaScript Object Notation, a standard for exchanging data between systems
Key-value store
A data storage and retrieval system in which a key (identifying an entity) is linked to the one or more values associated with that entity. This allows rapid lookup of values associated with an entity, but does not allow joins on other fields
Mash-up
A software application that dynamically aggregates information from many different sources, or output from many processes, in a single screen
MDM
Master Data Management, a system of policies, processes and technologies designed to maintain the accuracy and consistency of essential data across many data silos
Metadata
Typed data associated with a document, for example, Author, Date, Category
Mobile Web
Web pages accessible through a mobile device such as a smartphone
MySQL
A popular open source relational database
Normalized relational schema
A model for a relational database that is designed to prevent redundancies that can cause anomalies when inserting, updating, and deleting data
NoSQL
Not Only SQL, an umbrella term for large scale data storage and retrieval systems that use structures and querying methodologies that are different from those of relational database systems
OBI
Operational Business Intelligence, data reporting and analysis that supports decision making concerning routine, day-to-day operations
OCR
Optical Character Recognition, a technology used for converting paper documents or text encapsulated in images into electronic text, usually with some noise caused by the conversion
ODBC
Open Database Connectivity, a middleware for enabling and managing exchanges between databases
Offloading
Extracting information from a database application and storing it in a search engine application
OLAP
Online Analytical Processing, tools for analyzing data in databases
OLTP
Online Transaction Processing
Ontology
A taxonomy with rules that can deduce links not necessarily present in the taxonomy
Partition tolerance
Means that a distributed database can still function if some of its nodes are no longer available
Performance
The measure of a computer application’s rapidity, throughput, availability, or resource utilization
as Title, Creator, Publisher, etc.
