Glossary

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A-C

ADO (ActiveX Data Objects)

Object interface into the OLEDB programming interface.

ADO .NET

API in .NET for data access.

ACL

Access Control List. Contains lists of users and their appropriate permissions.

AIC

Application Integration Component. Software that allows BizTalk Server to send documents and files to a line of business applications.

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A computer character set and collating sequence.

ANSI

American National Standards Institute. A leading force behind the SQL standard.

Assembly

A collection of code and associated elements that comprises a Microsoft .NET solution created in Visual Studio .NET.

Authenticode

A framework that allows a developer to include digital signature information about programming code, including author details.

Batch File

A number of Transact-SQL statements executed together either interactively or from a file.

Blob

Binary Large Object. A datatype used for storing unstructured data such as pictures, sound or video. The actual datatype used in SQL Server is the image datatype.

BizTalk Initiative

Industrywide initiative designed to encourage the use of XML in businessto- business transactions. See www.biztalk.org.

Checkpoint

A mechanism that ensures that completed transactions are written from cache to the database at frequent intervals.

CLB

Component Load Balancing. Technique to spread a workload across components equally to improve processing throughput.

Clustered Index

A type of index where the physical order of the data in the table is the same as the order in the index. There can only be one clustered index per table.

Column

A relational model term that equates to a field. Also called an attribute.

COM+

The latest edition of COM with better support for transactions and the development of Internet-based applications.

Commit

A statement that finishes a transaction and makes all changes to the database permanent.

Composite Key

Any type of key that comprises of one of more columns.

Concurrency

The simultaneous use of a database by a number of users.

CSV

Comma Separated Value. A common format that data is placed into when exported from many computer systems. Uses commas to separate data values.

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