Guardian Programmer's Guide

Table Of Contents
Glossary
Guardian Programmer’s Guide 421922-014
Glossary - 2
alternate key
alternate key. A sequence of characters other than the primary key used as an alternate
index to records in a key-sequenced file.
alternate-key file. A key-sequenced file that provides the relationship between alternate
keys and primary keys.
ancestor. The process that is notified when a named process or process pair is deleted.
The ancestor is usually the process that created the named process or process pair.
ANSI. The American National Standards Institute.
APE. See application program interface (API).
API. See application program interface (API).
application program interface (API). A set of services (such as programming language
functions or procedures) that are called by an application program to communicate with
other software components. For example, an application program in the form of a client
might use an API to communicate with a server program.
ASSIGN. An association of a physical file name with a logical file name made by the TACL
ASSIGN command. The physical file name is any valid file name. The logical file
name is used within a program. The ASSIGN is therefore used to pass file names to
programs.
AXCEL. The command used to invoke the Accelerator on a TNS/R or TNS/E system.
beginning-of-tape (BOT) sticker. A light-reflecting strip that indicates the start of the
usable portion of a magnetic tape. Contrast with end-of-tape (EOT) sticker.
binary semaphore. A software tool used to synchronize processes. Binary semaphores
provide a way for several concurrently-executing processes to share a resource.
Using binary semaphores, an executing process can hold exclusive access to the
shared resource. Other processes execute until they need to use the resource, then
enter a wait state until the resource becomes available.
Binder. A programming utility that combines one or more compilation units’ TNS object
code files to create an executable TNS object code file for a TNS program or library.
Used only with TNS object files.
Binder region. The region of a TNS object file that contains header tables for use by the
Binder program.
binding. The operation of collecting, connecting, and relocating code and data blocks from
one or more separately compiled TNS object files to produce a target object file.
BOT sticker. See beginning-of-tape (BOT) sticker.