Tag: Glossary Guide

Statements of fact, quality, procedures, or content, to which applicable data entities are compared for purposes of acceptance or use. Standards are documented agreements used to justify decisions, implement policy, and ensure that data processes, products, or services meet their intended purpose. Using common standards increases the shareability, reliability, and effectiveness of data. Many different… Continue reading Standards

Any information about the location, shape, and relationships of geographic features. For highways this includes the relative locations and distances of transportation infrastructure.

The ability to change size to support larger or smaller volumes of data and more or fewer users with minimal impact on the unit cost of business and the procurement of additional services.

Also called “data reengineering.” Allows the user to capture physical models of legacy and production systems and relate each attribute in the data model to the database(s), table(s), and column(s) from which it is derived. Data reengineering is suitable for organizations that need to augment an existing system, particularly if the system requires new database… Continue reading Reverse Data Engineering

A central place in which databases are stored and maintained in an organized way. A repository may be directly accessible to users or it may be a place from which specific databases, files, or documents are obtained for further relocation or distribution in a network.

A database or database management system that stores information in tables—rows and columns of data—and conducts searches by using data in specified columns of one table to find additional data in another table. In a relational database, the rows of a table represent records (collections of information about separate items) and the columns represent fields… Continue reading Relational Database Management System

The storage of multiple copies of identical data. The process of limiting excessive copying, update, and transmission costs associated with redundant data is called “redundancy control.” Database replication (see definition) is a strategy for redundancy control with the intention to improve system performance. “Redundancy” may also be used to refer to backup systems that take… Continue reading Redundancy

A collection of data items arranged for processing by a program. Multiple records are contained in a file or data set. The organization of data in the record is usually prescribed by the programming language that defines the record’s organization or by the application that processes it. Typically, records can be of fixed or variable… Continue reading Record

A degree of computer responsiveness that a user considers to be adequately immediate or that allows the computer to keep pace with some external process.

A method of building computer systems in which the system is programmed and implemented in segments, rather than waiting until the entire project is completed for implementation. RAD uses such tools as CASE (see Computer Aided Software Engineering Tools) and visual programming (see definition).