Questions tagged [terminology]

Clarification and disambiguation of terminology in order to focus on clear, consistent, distinct, and easily recognized usages for databases and database technology.

This tag is for discussing terminology with the goal of improving clarity in word usage in order to enhance consistent communication about topics related to databases.

This tag should be used infrequently and only when consensus is needed.

The terminology that we use for computer technology comes from many sources and some terms are used for a variety of different purposes. In many cases the context may be enough to avoid general confusion. However, some usages are ambiguous and would benefit from promoting a consensus.

Good Examples: For databases the terms tables, columns and rows are generally, but not universally, accepted.

Poor Examples: New acronyms, catch phrases, overused words, old acronyms, old usages, obsolete terms, et cetera.

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Commonly Used Acronyms by Database Administrators

What are the most commonly used acronyms among database administrators and what are their correlated meanings? This is for the community and those searching for meanings of commonly used terms and acronyms when working with databases, etc.
tacotuesday
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What does the word "SARGable" really mean?

SQL Server users use the term "sargable". I'm wondering if there is an objective implementation-agnostic timeless definition for "sargable." For instance, WHERE foo LIKE '%bar%' is said by many to be not sargable, but some RDBMSs are able to use…
Evan Carroll
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What does "collation" mean?

I am learning sqlite from a book which has mentioned collation and collating sequence multiple times. What does it mean exactly in the database world?
mumtaz
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Best table name instead of "user", if the DB doesn't like that

Yes, I know, it is possible to quote the name of the table, but it is sometimes improper. If there is no alternative, I name this table as "users", although this semantically unneeded plural makes things a little bit inconsistent. What alternative…
peterh
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What is meant by DDBB?

Today we got a term DDBB. I am not sure whether it refer normal database or database driver in certain programming language. Google search did not help me much in this. And I am sure it is not 'Dirty Dozen Brass Band'.
Junaid
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What do you call something that's not the primary key?

I've been working with a group who have built a system where they've coined a few new terms in the process, and I wanted to know if there's something more standardized they should be calling it. Basically, they have tables which hold versioned info,…
Joe
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Most common way to express cardinality in ascii

I know that there are several symbols to express the cardinality between entities. But is there a pragmatic common way to express cardinality in ascii? Example: User -- Group. One user can have several groups and One group can have several users. I…
guettli
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What does it mean to "materialize"?

While learning about "data layout", I came across the term "materialize", which does not have a clear definition and explanation. What is materialize and what does materialize do? This question is not related to materialized views, and is not…
Jigao
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Term for non transaction save actions

If you only look at the database everything is fine. You have transactions and if somethings goes wrong everything gets rolled back. That's nice - I like this. BUT: I want to send mails. Now I am in trouble because I can't…
guettli
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Software Engineers and DBAs

What are main differences between Database Administrators and Software Engineers? To what extent should a Software Engineer know the details of the underlying database? Where is the border between these two professions?
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What is meant by "churn"?

I came across the following sentence in this blog post: Know your data - this helps you make the right decisions in terms of data types/nullability and churn helps with long term maintenance goals (and initial maintenance plans) I can't figure…
Kolja
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What is a source table, and a target table?

I've seen alot of talk about source tables, and target tables on the internet, but no definitions of what these things are...from what I can infer it seems to mean something about copying data from an old table with an old schema into a new table…
leeand00
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Is a SQL query still called a "query" when doing a deletion, update or insertion?

I'm not sure what to call a query that... isn't really a query; is "statement" a better word to use in place? Or how about "script"? Or would something else be more appropriate? Note: I've seen someone call it a "DELETE query" once
Drewdavid
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Is there a term for a table that has an "effective date" column?

I work with a system which uses a lot of tables whose primary keys include a foreign key to another table and a column indicating the date that record became/becomes "active". Example tables: employee (primary key is…
matts
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A way to refer to a set as a whole

I am not a specialist in databases, and I only need to clarify a terminological question that I have. Assume we have a table containing the field F. F gets its values from the set S, a collection of values of a certain type. (Let's imagine that the…
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