General Tech
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MapInfo / GIS
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Oracle / Database
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Misc / Useless
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Internet Definitions
ActiveX
ActiveX controls are well-defined component packages from Microsoft's Object Model, that offer object-oriented extensibility on Win95 and NT. Repackaged OLE custom controls. ActiveX components aren't true objects in the classical definition because they don't support things like inheritance. Supports multiple interfaces via COM. Also Microsoft�s technology for distributing software across the internet. ActiveX controls are distributed as executable binaries, which must be compiled separately for each target machine and operating system. They contain no limitations on what commands can be executed.
Archie
A system for locating files that are publicly available by anonymous FTP.
ARP
Address Resolution Protocol - The protocol that translates Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses (for example, 128.10.3.42) into physical network addresses. One of the many members of the TCP/IP protocol suite, ARP is a key player in the process that allows a packet of data addressed to a particular Internet host to find its destination.
CERN
Conseil European pour la Recherdhe Nucleaire (European Laboratory for Particle Physics), the birthplace of the Web. Tim Berners-Lee worked at CERN when he came up with the original proposals for the Web, and CERN was the testing ground for many of the original Web protocols. In addition, CERN wrote one of the major HTTP servers-the CERN httpd.
CGI
Common Gateway Interface - the standard used to define the mechanism by which HTTP servers communicate with server-side executables. A means for transferring information that users have typed into forms found on Web pages to scripts or programs run on a Web server, and vice versa. Two of the most common uses for CGI are performing database queries in response to user input and creating dynamic Web pages by assembling HTML data on the fly. CGI/1.0 has been replaced by CGI/1.1, which allows for slightly greater flexibility. The most popular language for writing CGI programs is Perl.
Cookies
A mechanism for caching information in the Web browser. Cookies can be used to maintain information in the Web browser in sophisticated Web applications that would otherwise have to be passed back and forth between the server and browser by use of HTML hidden fields. Information stored in cookies is usually defined to have an expiration date and time. It's a piece of data given from a web browser to the client for persistent information flow across sessions.
Daemon
A UNIX process that waits for system events to occur and responds to them. For example, an HTTP server-like the NCSA httpd or CERN httpd-is a daemon waiting to respond to requests from the outside world. Other standard daemons include fingers (the finger daemon), lpd (the print-spool daemon), ftpd (the FTP server daemon), and inetd (the super-daemon that listens on multiple ports and starts up other daemons when necessary). Daemon can also be spelled demon, although techies tend to prefer the former spelling.
DNS
Domain Name Service - the means of translating between hostnames and IP addresses. It is the computer equivalent of telephone book. Whenever you have a hostname, like netcom.com, DNS provides the means of looking up that name and finding the machine's IP address. The database isn't stored on any one computer; rather, it's distributed among thousands of name servers spread throughout the Internet.
Firewall
A security measure used to protect computers on a local network from outside accesses (between the trusted and untrusted networks). This is achieved by making a single gateway between the network and the outside world through which all the packets have to travel. This gateway is then configured to allow only certain types of accesses. For example, it is possible to configure a firewall to allow only outside accesses on ports 21 (FTP) and 23 (telnet) and refuse all other connections. It is also possible to forbid accesses from certain outside IP addresses; however, this really isn't that secure since it is always possible to spoof your IP address.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol - a widely used TCP/IP protocol for transferring files from one machine to another. Internet users may use FTP applications to log in to FTP servers and download files. No restrictions are placed on file contents; they may contain text or binary data. Files may be protected from unauthorized access using authentication control, or they can be made public with anonymous FTP, which doesn't require a login name or password.
Gateway
A computer system that transfers data between normally incompatible applications or networks. It reformats the data so that is acceptable for the new network (or application) before passing it on. A gateway might connect two dissimilar networks, like DECnet and the Internet; or it might allow tow incompatible applications to communicate over the same network (like mail systems with different message formats). The term is often used interchangeably with router (q.v.), but this usage is incorrect.
Gopher
A means of accessing distributed information on the Internet. The most immediate precursor to the web.
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language - a text-based page description language that is used to define documents on the World Wide Web. HTML is a markup language which allows for the creation of hypertext links between related documents - file-based.
HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol - the text-based protocol that serves as the official language of the World Wide Web. HTTP defines high-level commands, or methods, such as GET and
PUT, that browsers use to communicate with Web servers. HTTP provides certain advantages over previous protocols, like FTP, because it allows more meta-information to be translated with the data being sent.
HTTPd
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Daemon - is a program to serve information, much in the same way that Netscape is a program to browse information in the World Wide Web. From the Client-Server viewpoint, NCSA HTTPd is the Server to the Browser Client.
ICMP
Internet Control Message Protocol - the TCP/IP protocol used to send control and error information regarding IP datagram transmissions. When an IP datagram cannot be delivered to its destination, perhaps because the machine at the destination is temporarily out of service or message traffic is too heavy, a router may use ICMP to notify the sender of the failure.
IISAPI
Internet Information Server Application Programming Interface
IGMP
Internet Group Management Protocol - the TCP/IP protocol that permits Internet hosts to take part in IP multicasting - an efficient means of broadcasting messages to groups of computers.
IMAP4
Internet Message Access Protocol 4 - a still-evolving protocol that allows a client to access and manipulate e-mail messages on a server. IMAP4, designed for disconnected e-mail use, lets you perform such tasks as managing folders remotely, viewing just message subject lines, and selectively downloading messages and attachments based on various criteria (size or author, for example). IMAP4 also allows for shared mail folders.
Internet
(a) Generally (not capitalized), any collection of distinct networks working together as one. (b) Specifically (capitalized), the world-wide "network of networks" that are connected to each other, using the IP protocol and other similar protocols. The Internet provides file transfer, remote login, electronic mail, news, and other services.
InterNIC
Internet Network Information Center - the administrative organization that is responsible for, among other things, allocating domain names and distributing RFCs. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the InterNIC is currently run by Network Solutions and AT&T.
Intranet
The integration of Internet paradigms and standards within a corporation's existing network infrastructure to create dynamically more effective business management systems.
IP
Internet Protocol - the protocol responsible for transmitting packets of data over the Internet and routing them to their destinations. Tagging a packet with an IP address identifying an Internet host and transmitting it using IP is analogous to addressing an envelope and dropping it in the mail. IP plays the role of post office, allowing the networks
and routers involved in the delivery process to talk to each other as the packet finds its way to the addressee. IP provides for a certain amount of reliability that other standards (see UDP) don't provide, although this comes at the cost of a greater overhead (i.e., slower speed).
ISP
Internet Service Provider - a company (usually a local one) that provides customers connections to the Internet. Generally ISPs offer connections at speeds anywhere between 14.4 kbps to full T1 connections.
Java
A modern, object-oriented language derived from C that supports single-state and multiple interfaces. Has the power of C++, but is far less complex because it has automatic storage management so don't have to be concerned with pointers and it's operations are type-safe. Enables highly efficient interpretation and compilation that has highly compact set of byte codes easily distributed over Internet/intranet. Also has a standard, platform-neutral binary format at both the source and binary levels.
JavaBeans
Small visual reusable, prebuilt Java software components created and sold by third-party toll vendors. Are to Java as what OCX and AvtiveX are to Windows development. They are not language dependent (unlike ActiveX), but they are platform-dependent.
JavaScript
Performs validation of user input and easier navigation around the application scenario.
JDBC
Java Database Connectivity - a standard set of Java classes providing vendor-independent access to relational databases. Specified by JavaSoft and modeled after ODBC. JDBC calls are converted to ODBC calls which in turn call the vendor-specific API (OCI for Oracle).
JOE
Java implementation of the CORBA ORB specification currently platform-specific to Sun. It enables Java applets or objects to communicate with other Java applets and objects written in other languages like C++. It's like Visigenic's VisiBroker ORB for Java.
JSQL (J/SQL)
A precompiler that allows users to embed SQL statements in JAVA code - from IBM, Tandem, and Oracle. It will generate standard JAVA code with JDBC calls.
LiveHTML
One of the most popular features of the Web is known as Server Side Includes (SSI). Certain documents can be parsed by a web server before sending them back to the client, and they may contain "include" directives instructing the web server to insert information into the document on the fly. Examples of use are page-hit counters, timestamps, etc. Server Side Includes literally bring otherwise static HTML pages to life, hence the name LiveHTML. Oracle WebServer 2.0 supports SSI+, a common extension to NCSA's original specification. LiveHTML code is formatted as SGML comments, so that it is ignored should the file ever find its way to the browser unparsed. The format for LiveHTML codes, therefore, is the following:
MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions - a protocol for sending non-ASCII data (for example, sound, video, and graphics) over the Internet using text-based transport protocols such as SMTP.
Mosaic
One particular browser for the World Wide Web that supports hypermedia. Mosaic is often used (incorrectly) as a synonym for the World Wide Web.
Multihosting
A way of kludging your computer to accept packets addressed to multiple IP addresses. By detecting which IP address the packet was intended for, it is possible to simulate multiple servers on a single machine.
NNTP
Network News Transfer Protocol - protocol used to transfer USENET news articles between computers on the Internet.
NSAPI
Netscape Server API
PERL
Practical Extraction and Reporting Language - an interpreted language written by Larry Wall that is great for string manipulation and parsing tasks. Many CGI scripts are written in perl since it is so easy to use. Also know as Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.
PING
Packet Internet Groper - a TCP/IP application used to determine whether other machines are online and available. Pinging is performed by sending an ICMP echo request and waiting for a
reply.
POP
Post Office Protocol - the text-based protocol used to send and retrieve Internet e-mail messages. Unlike SMTP, which is used primarily to transfer mail messages between mail servers,
POP provides a way for mail programs to interact with the virtual mailboxes in which messages wait until they are sent or retrieved. POP comes in two flavors: POP2 and POP3. The two are related in name only and are not compatible.
PPP
Point-to-Point Protocol - a protocol that allows for routing any protocol (e.g., IP, Apple Talk, Novell NetWare, etc.) over a serial line (modem). By setting up a PPP connection from your machine, it is possible to use all the standard network related utilities (FTP, telnet, etc) even though you are only connected to the rest of the world via a modem. PPP is similar to but more robust than SLIP, which lacks support for data compression, error detection, and multiple protocols on a single line. PPP resolves all these deficiencies and more.
PPTP
Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol - an enhanced form of PPP that uses "tunneling", encapsulating packets of data written for one network protocol inside packets used by another, to allow TCP/IP data to be transmitted over non-TCP/IP networks. The most common use for PPTP is to join physical networks together to form "virtual internets" using the Internet as a go-between.
Proxy Server
A server that makes a request on behalf of a client instead of the client doing it directly. This is often required in the case of a firewalled network, where the proxy server sits on both the Internet and the secure internal network. A user on the secure internal network cannot make a request directly to the outside world, so it asks the proxy server, which requests the document on its behalf.
RARP
Reverse Address Resolution Protocol - the Internet protocol that permits a physical network address (for example, a 48-bit Ethernet address) to be translated into an IP address by sending a request to an RARP server. This protocol is used by diskless workstations to determine their own IP addresses at startup.
RFC
An online document containing proposals, standards, and other information regarding Internet technologies. RFCs are available by anonymous FTP from a variety of locations, including InterNIC's own ds.internic.net. They may also be requested by e-mail (mailserv@ds.internic.com) or by phone (800-444-4345).
SLIP
Serial Line Internet Protocol - a widely used, but somewhat outdated protocol for establishing dial-up connections to the Internet. Technically speaking, SLIP is a packet-framing protocol that defines how IP datagrams (packets of data transmitted over the Internet using IP) are packaged for transmission over serial data lines--for example, over a serial link between your modem and an Internet service provider.
S/MIME (SMIME)
Secure MIME - messaging transmission utilizes certificate-based authentication and encryption to transmit messages between users and applications which are guaranteed to be from the identified sender of the message, secure from prying eyes and only readable by the intended recipient(s). The key benefits of S/MIME are:
- it enables confidential information to be exchanged over the internet without concern of access by other parties.
- eliminates fraudulent use of email by requiring a digital certificate to "sign" the message this ensuring identification of the send of the message.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol - the text-based TCP/IP protocol used to exchange mail messages on the Internet. A simplified version of the earlier MTP (Mail Transport Protocol), SMTP defines the format and content of transactions between mail servers.
SSI
Server Side Includes - allows you to implement some dynamic behavior in static HTML pages that would otherwise require more-complicated CGI programming.
SSL
Secure Sockets Layer - Netscape's proposed to W3C as a web standard for secure transactions. Involves full end-to-end encryption of all sockets communication (from browser to the web server). Built over tcp/ip and under the http, ftp, etc. layer.
TCP
Transmission Control Protocol - the TCP/IP protocol that provides reliable stream delivery service to Internet applications. Using TCP, an Internet client can open a virtual connection to another Internet client and transmit streams of data. Unlike its counterpart, UDP, the TCP protocol ensures reliable delivery by retransmitting lost and corrupted data packets. It also guarantees that an application on the receiving end of a TCP connection will receive bits and bytes in the same order in which they were sent.
TCP/IP
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol - a suite of networking protocols that includes TCP, IP, UDP, ARP, RARP, and ICMP, to name just a few. Often referred to as the "the glue that binds the Internet," TCP/IP allows disjoint, dissimilar, and spatially separated physical networks to be joined together to form one large virtual network, or "internet".
TFTP
Trivial File Transfer Protocol - a simplified version of FTP that lacks the authentication services FTP provides and relies on UDP rather than TCP for data transport. TFTP is less complex and easier to program than FTP.
UDP
User Datagram Protocol - the TCP/IP protocol that allows packets of data, or datagrams, to be sent from one Internet application to another. UDP is a "connectionless" protocol, because,
unlike TCP, it does not require the sender and receiver to establish a connection before data is transmitted. It's considered "unreliable," because it doesn't guarantee that datagrams will arrive in the same order they were sent, or even that they will arrive at all. If reliability is desired, it's up to the application using UDP to provide it.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator - a human-readable string that identifies the location of a resource on the Internet (for example, a page of HTML data or a .GIF file) and the protocol used to retrieve it. The URL for a document published by the World Wide Web Consortium that describes the format of URLs is http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Addressing/Addressing.html.
USENET
The USENET is an informal, rather anarchic, group of systems that exchange "news". News is essentially similar to "bulletin boards" on other networks. USENET actually predates the Internet, but these days, the Internet is used to transfer much of the USNET's traffic.
UUEncode/UUDecode
Along with MIME, another common method of sending binary e-mail attachments as plain ASCII text.
Veronica
A service, very similar to Archie, that's built into Gopher. Just as Archie allows you to search all FTP sites for files, Veronica allows you to search all Gopher sites for menu items (files, directories, and other resources).
VRML
Virtual Reality Modeling Language - the 3-D counterpart to HTML, VRML is a scriptlike language that permits rich 3-D scenes to be described in simple text files and displayed in VRML-capable Web browsers. VRML solves the problem of the high bandwidth required to transmit bitmapped scenes by minimizing the flow of information from the Web server to the browser and allowing the browser to render the scene, and thus do the bulk of the work required to display the scene, locally.
WAIS
Wide Area Information Service - a very powerful system for looking up information in databases (or libraries) across the Internet.
WWW
World Wide Web - a hyperext-based system for finding and accessing Internet resources. Benefits are a wider choices through open, non-proprietary standards; easier application deployment and management; speedier, more accurate transactions through customer self-service; time-savings; broader reach and larger potential customer base; better and richer information for the business, its partners, suppliers, and consumer customers; lower training costs (only learn the web browser), instant user feedback (mailto buttons); and self-service information systems open 24 hours a day. It was the creation of this network in 1994 (and the proliferation of browsers that followed soon after) that made Internet a household word.
X.400
email services
X.500
directory services
X.509
X.509 V3 Digital Certificates provide a mechanism for strong authentication services in many applications. Version 3 adds the ability to extend the structure of the certificate to allow many application-specific attributes to be incorporated. The key benefit of digital certificates is that they eliminate the cumbersome login and password dialogues when connecting to secure resources.
