Dark fiber
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A term associated with fiber
optic cabling. Specifically it relates to fiber cables that have been laid
but are not yet being used.
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Data
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IT systems are made up of
hardware, software and data. Data is
the material that the hardware processes, as instructed by the software. If
you use computers that don’t use data, or don’t have any inputs or don’t have
any outputs, you may not be getting the best from that computer.
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Data management
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The part of an application
associated with the storage and maintenance of data.
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Data mining
|
Pattern and trend detection tools
used in a data warehousing environment. Associated with Business
Intelligence.
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Data Protection Act
|
UK Act created to ensure that
holders of data that can identify a living person is managed appropriately.
Doesn’t apply to domestic use, so address book owners need not panic.
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Data Warehouse
|
An approach/architecture, which
links the disparate, databases in an organisation together. The aim being to enable staff to see the
big/consolidated data picture and thus make informed and timely decisions.
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Database
|
An electronic filing cabinet.
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DB/2
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IBM’s flagship database
product.
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DBMS
|
Database Management System. A software product used to build and
manage data intensive systems. Often referred to as a database.
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DCL
|
Digital Control Language -
Digital’s job control language for the Vax. Old school.
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Dcom
|
Distributed Component Object
Model. This is Microsoft’s middleware technology that enables software
modules to communicate with each other across a network.
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Dec
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Digital Equipment Company. Another name for Digital. Once the world’s number 2 to IBM. Now owned by Compaq, which is now owned by
HP.
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Dec Alpha
|
Alphas are Digital’s 64-bit
replacement to the Vax computer. Old school.
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Dec Vax
|
Digital’s highly successful line
of computers. Production has now
stopped. Despite this, like Renault 5
cars, they will be around for some time. Old school.
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Decentralised architecture
|
A computing architecture where the
processing takes place on more than one device.
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Decision support
|
Tools that provide management
with the right information in the right form at the right time. Business
Intelligence is a more common term today.
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Defragmentation
|
A process associated with storage
whereby the disk space is effectively reorganised. The upshot is that after
defragmentation data access will be faster.
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Delivery
|
The installation and
acceptance-testing phase of the application development life-cycle.
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Denial of Service
|
A term used to describe an attack
whereby the computing resources of the attacked organization are rendered
unusable. Eg. Spraying a web site with harmless but high volume flows of
emails. The effect being to crash the email server and stop genuine customers
getting to the service.
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DES
|
Data Encryption Standard is a
method for encrypting data that was adopted by the US in the seventies. Des
today is considered too insecure for many applications.
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Design
|
A phase in the software
development life-cycle where the issue of how the requirements are to be
mapped onto the technology is addressed.
One of the few parts of the life cycle where thinking is encouraged,
which can unnerve managers because it is not as easy to monitor as
doing. It is thus often overlooked.
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Desk top mapping
|
A type of GIS that plots
information on a geographical map. Often used as a decision support tool with
data warehouses.
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Developer
|
A person who is involved in
writing software. It is mostly used
as another term for programmer.
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Development life-cycle
|
A set of steps that define the
evolution of a system from concept to grave. Mostly associated with software
development.
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DG – UX
|
Data General’s Unix
offering. Runs on the Aviion range of
computers. NB. Data General is now owned by EMC. Old school.
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DHCP
|
Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol – This is a networking protocol that allows Internet addresses to be
dynamically allocated to Windows PCs.
Sharing Internet addresses gets around the fact that there is a very
limited number of Internet addresses available.
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DHTML
|
Dynamic HTML. HTML can only
produce static web pages. In other words the page has no functionality. DHTML
uses HTML and a client-side scripting language such as JavaScript to add
functionality to the page. With DHTML the web page developer can incorporate
for example roll over or drop down menus.
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Digital (1)
|
See Dec.
|
Digital (2)
|
Based on binary representation.
For example digital computers and digital communications.
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Digital Cash
|
An electronic form of cash held
on either a smart card or a device, eg. mobile phone. Useful for making
micro-payments.
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Digital Certificate
|
Electronic means of
authenticating an organization. Key to carrying out supply chain management
via the web.
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Digital Signature
|
An electronic mechanism for
authenticating the source of an electronic document. It is a key element of
the PKI security framework.
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Disaster Recovery
|
A term, which describes the
business of ensuring one’s business continues after a major disaster. The
events of September 11th 2001 in the US brought this into sharp relief.
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Disintermediation
|
A dotcom era terms for removing
the middleman. E-business was seen as a way of squeezing ‘value-free’
processes out of the business value chain. A somewhat passé term.
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Distributed Computing
|
This architectural concept
relates to having application software spread across more than one
platform. It differs from networked
computing, which simply implies the ability to send files, messages and
e-mails between hardware platforms.
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Distributed system
|
A system that is spread over more
than one platform.
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DKNY
|
Donna Karan New York
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DL1
|
Data Language/1. An old IBM programming language used for
building and accessing databases.
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DNA
|
Distributed Internet Application
Architecture. Microsoft’s vision of how all systems should be built.
Superseded by .NET.
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Dom
|
Document Object Model – This is a
specification created by the W3C to represent HTML and XML documents in a
language and platform independent standard. Its creation was in response to the
compatibility problems associated with different browsers interpreting DHTML
in different ways leading to the rewriting of large amounts of code. Adhering
to DOM effectively makes one’s documents browser independent.
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Domino
|
A component of Lotus Corporation’s
Notes product. It provides a development and runtime environment for
groupware applications.
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DOS (1)
|
This was the first operating
system associated with the IBM PC. There were a number of flavours from
vendors such as IBM and Microsoft. The interface was command line based and
thus not very user friendly.
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DoS (2)
|
See Denial of Service.
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DotNet
|
Written .NET. This is Microsoft’s
strategy / architecture for its next generation of products/services. A key
theme is that it will enable applications to be served up via the web.
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DPA
|
See Data Protection Act.
|
DSDM
|
Dynamic Systems Development
Method, an agile software application development methodology.
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Dumb terminal
|
A front-end device, which has a
non-graphical user interface. It also lacks processing power and disk memory.
This is old technology, very much associated with mainframes and mainframe
variants.
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DWDM
|
Dark Wave Division Multiplexing.
An emerging standard/ technology that increases the bandwidth in fibre optic
cables by many orders of magnitude.
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