Informix Dynamic Server V10 . . . Extended Functionality for Modern Business

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Glossary

Access control list (ACL). The list of principals

that have explicit permission (to publish, to

subscribe to, and to request persistent delivery of a

publication message) against a topic in the topic

tree. The ACLs define the implementation of

topic-based security.

Aggregate. Pre-calculated and pre-stored

summaries, kept in the data warehouse to improve

query performance.

Aggregation. An attribute-level transformation

that reduces the level of detail of available data, for

example, having a Total Quantity by Category of

Items rather than the individual quantity of each item

in the category.

Application programming interface. An

interface provided by a software product that

enables programs to request services.

Asynchronous messaging. A method of

communication between programs in which a

program places a message on a message queue,

and then proceeds with its own processing without

waiting for a reply to its message.

Attribute. A field in a dimension table.

BLOB. Binary large object, a block of bytes of data

(for example, the body of a message) that has no

discernible meaning, but is treated as one solid

entity that cannot be interpreted.

Commit. An operation that applies all the changes

made during the current unit of recovery or unit of

work. After the operation is complete, a new unit of

recovery or unit of work begins.

Composite key. A key in a fact table that is the

concatenation of the foreign keys in the dimension

tables.

Computer. A device that accepts information (in

the form of digitalized data) and manipulates it for

some result based on a program or sequence of

instructions about how the data is to be processed.

Configuration. The collection of brokers, their

execution groups, the message flows and sets that

are assigned to them, and the topics and associated

access control specifications.

Continuous Data Replication. Refer to

Enterprise Replication

DDL (data definition language). An SQL

statement that creates or modifies the structure of a

table or database, for example, CREATE TABLE,

DROP TABLE, ALTER TABLE, or CREATE

DATABASE.

DML (data manipulation language). An INSERT,

UPDATE, DELETE, or SELECT SQL statement.

Data append. A data loading technique where new

data is added to the database leaving the existing

data unaltered.

Data cleansing. A process of data manipulation

and transformation to eliminate variations and

inconsistencies in data content. This is typically to

improve the quality, consistency, and usability of the

data.

Data federation. The process of enabling data

from multiple heterogeneous data sources to appear

as though it is contained in a single relational

database. Can also be referred to “distributed

access.”

Data mart. An implementation of a data

warehouse, typically with a smaller and more tightly

restricted scope, such as for a department or

workgroup. It can be independent, or derived from

another data warehouse environment.