Glossary

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ACID

Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. Properties considered compulsory in relational database theory to ensure transactions are executed correctly by an RDBMS.

ACL

Access Control List. A list maintained by the Windows operating system that is used to control which permissions users and groups have to a resource.

Activity Monitor

A component of the SQL Server Management Studio that shows what processes are currently connected to the SQL Server instance, what objects they are accessing, what locks have been acquired, and related information.

AD

Active Directory. Information stored and used by a Windows 2003 network. Used by administrators to manage security accounts and control security.

Ad hoc report

A report in SQL Server Reporting Services that is generated by users through the Report Builder application.

AFTER trigger

A SQL Server trigger that fires after the DML operation.

Aggregate function

A function that performs a calculation at the column level on a set of rows to return a single value. Examples of T-SQL aggregate functions include AVG, MIN, and SUM.

Agile

An adaptive, iterative method or framework for developing software.

Alert

A user-defined response to a SQL Server event.

Alias

A data type built on a system data type as a common method for referring to a particular type of data.

Application role

A SQL Server role used by the application, instead of the user, to authenticate against a database solution.

Article

A component of a publication used in replication. Represents a table or a subset of data from the table you want to replicate.

Assembly

A managed application module, composed of class metadata and managed code, that can be embedded in a database solution as a database object in SQL Server 2005.

Asymmetric encryption

Requires a pair of keys to encode and decode information. One key is used to encrypt the plain text, and a second key, which is part of the matched pair, is used to decrypt that cipher text.

Asymmetric key

An encryption key that is used to encrypt and decrypt data when there is no shared encryption key (secret). Implemented through a private key and public key system where the keys are related mathematically. The private key is kept secret, while the public key might be widely distributed. One key “locks” the data, and the other is required to unlock it.

Attribute

See Field.

Authentication

A challenge/response mechanism that ensures that a user connecting to SQL Server is authorized to do so.

Authorization

A process that verifies the set of permissions granted to a user and consequently what they can do.