Introduction to Data Management

Glossary
Glossary-4 15873 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Database integrity. Protection of your database against contamination or loss of data
caused by a system or disk-drive failure. Many products cooperate to afford this
protection, including the GUARDIAN 90 operating system, TMF, the EXPAND data
communication software, and RDF.
DBA. See Database administrator.
DDL. Data Definition Language, a language used for: defining data objects in
ENSCRIBE files; translating object definitions into source code for programming
languages and for other products on NonStop systems; and generating messages. Not
to be confused with the data definition language statements that are part of the
NonStop SQL product.
Decoration. In PATHMAKER, any screen element that displays unchanging text on a
screen. Decorations that PATHMAKER creates automatically include the requester
title and data field prompts. In the PATHMAKER Screen Painter, you can manually
add separation lines, borders, boxes, column headings, or other displayed text.
Dedicated device. In PATHWAY, a terminal or other I/O device dedicated exclusively
to running a particular screen program. This device can only be used by the
PATHWAY system to which the screen program belongs.
Dictionary. See Data dictionary.
Disk process. The portion of the operating system software that performs read, write,
and lock operations on disk volumes, and creates TMF audit-trail records.
Distributed database. A database whose objects reside on more than one system in a
network of systems, and whose objects can be accessed from any system in the
network.
Distributed dictionary. In NonStop SQL, a data dictionary whose definitions reside on
multiple systems in a network; the dictionary for a distributed database.
DP2. The name of the disk process used by NonStop SQL and ENSCRIBE for all file
and record management operations.
Dynamic SQL. An advanced programming technique that allows a program to define
general SQL statements that are not fully specified until execution time. Dynamic
SQL is intended to support interactive commands entered at a terminal.
EDIT. A text editor that offers both line-editing and full-screen editing capabilities.
EDIT file. An unstructured file containing text that can be processed by either of the
Tandem editors, EDIT or TEDIT. An EDIT file typically contains either source
program code or documentation.
ENABLE program generator. A tool for generating simple OLTP applications based on
data from ENSCRIBE files.
End user. A person running an application produced by PATHMAKER or
PATHWAY.