Due to the complex nature of the tools and applications used in database management, there are many discipline-specific terms, phrases, and acronyms that can be confusing and confounding to the new or casual user. The informal and "unofficial" definitions presented in this glossary should provide a working knowledge base of many of the important terms for the casual and experienced user alike.

Numbers

4GL.

See fourth-generation language..

A

aggregate function.

Any computational method which acts on a multiple records and produces an aggregation result. Examples of this type of function are SUM(), AVERAGE(), MAX(), etc. Aggreagate functions can be either built-in functions (see which), or user-defined functions (see which).

ASCII.

Acronym for the American Standards Committee for Information Interchange. This standard has been in use for decades, and assigns specific code numbers for every printable text character (standard ASCII) as well as numerous graphical and non-printable characters (extended ASCII), such as printer command codes.

attribute.

An attribute is a data field represented by a column within a database object. The database object can be a table, a view, or a report.

audit trail.

A record of actions taken on any part of a data management system which allow tracking of all critcal information needed to reconstruct a series of actions. An audit trail can track changes to table structures, data type definitions, data elements, deleted records, edited or added records, etc.

B

BLOB.

Acronym for a Binary Large Object. In most cases these are large image or vector files...