Oasis
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Organisation for Structured
Information Standards. It exists to promote XML and other vendor independent
data transfer standards. Much of its work today is focused on web standards.
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Object
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An object orientation term. A piece of
software that can be reused in different applications. Eg.
A pull down menu. Strictly speaking the correct term is ‘Class’ as an
object is merely an instance of class. For example one might refer to a
customer object. Customer is actually a class and Mr John Smith, being a
specific customer is really the object.
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Object Orientation
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Object Orientation. A relatively new (40 years old) approach
to software development designed to promote reusability of software and to
make maintenance of software easier.
Reusability is not happening as predicted by the textbooks, but the
overall effect today is that more maintainable software is being produced.
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ODBC
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Open Database Connectivity – A
middleware standard that allows front-end GUI development languages such as Visual
Basic to access server databases.
ODBC protects the front-end developers from needing to know anything
about the back end database.
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Off shoring
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Off shoring is a concept associated
with outsourcing part of your business to a low cost location. Increasingly
popular in respect of IT. Some organizations will set up a branch of their
business off shore or hand over this part of their business to a third party
off shore services provider.
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Office
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Microsoft’s best selling office
suite. It comprises Word, Excel,
Access and PowerPoint. Under threat from open source alternatives.
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OLAP
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Online Analytical Processing. A tool used to carry out data analysis.
OLAP tools are a type of Business Intelligence (BI) tool. Also very much
associated with Data Warehousing.
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On shoring
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Outsourcing to a location in the same
country as the buyer.
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OLE
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Object Linking and Embedding. An old
Microsoft technology for linking documents together.
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OMT
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Object Modeling Technique. A
predecessor of RUP.
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On
Demand
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A term coined by IBM to embrace their
vision of the future. A future where businesses will be more responsive to
the needs of their customers and changes in the marketplace. IBM coined the
phrase with business in mind but it also lends itself to IT. See Utility Computing
to understand how On Demand relates to IT.
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OO
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See Object Orientation.
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Open Office
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Legally known as OpenOffice.org. It is
an open source suite of applications designed to erode Microsoft’s dominance
in this space.
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Open Systems
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A philosophy that promotes standards
as a way of empowering users to avoid vendor lock-in. Essentially open standards are those that
are not under the control of a single vendor. As such a committee of people
from a variety of institutions controls them.
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Opera
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A browser designed for palm top
computers.
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Open source
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Software that is fully configurable by
the developer community because the source code is openly available to
everyone. It can also be thought of as a religious cult that is sweeping
through the IT industry.
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Operating System
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This is the software that manages the
hardware resources of a computer. It
can be thought of as a layer of software, which protects the application
software from the underlying hardware.
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Operator
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A person involved in monitoring the
health of one or more back end computers.
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Oracle
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A major player in the world of
databases and enterprise applications. It is the number two software player
behind Microsoft. This is something that Oracle’s founder has a serious
problem with.
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Oracle 8i
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Oracle database product. Old school.
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Oracle 9i
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Oracle database product. Old school.
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Oracle 10G
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Oracle’s latest database product.
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Oracle 11i
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Oracle’s latest enterprise
applications solution.
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OS/2
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IBM’s failed attempt to topple
Microsoft’s Windows.
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OSF/1
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Old school version of Unix associated
with DEC, a company that no longer exists.
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Outsourcing
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The concept of handing over part of
one’s business to a third party vendor so that they take responsibility for
it. The reason for doing this is that the vendor is likely to be able to do
it cheaper and perhaps even better. The outsourcing of IT services is
popular. See Off Shoring and Near Shoring.
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