HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Appendix A Glossary This appendix provides a glossary of System Dictionary terms. Access - The right to read or manipulate a dictionary domain or occurrence. Access Rights - The rights of a scope to read or manipulate a domain or occurrence, as determined by whether that scope is the owner of the item, or is just associated with it. Alias Name - Different names associated with different external subsystem uses of an occurrence, including a difference in programming syntax (e.g. the use of the underscore (_) instead of the hyphen (-) in names). Association - An explicit access assigned between a scope and a domain, entity, or relationship, which has been granted to that scope by the owner scope of the domain, entity, or relationship. Attribute - An object in the dictionary structure that is a piece of information describing an entity type or relationship type. Attribute Edit - A value or range of values used for determining if input attribute values are valid when creating or modifying an occurrence. Also used to specify the default attribute value to use when an occurrence is created. Attribute Prompting - A facility that prompts for attribute values whenever you issue a CREATE, MODIFY, or REPORT command without the ATTRIBUTE-LIST parameter. (SDMAIN only) Attribute Value - The specific information (e.g. text, numbers, etc) assigned to an attribute, describing a particular occurrence of an entity type or relationship type. Binary Relationship - A relationship involving two entities. Child Entity - The second entity in a relationship. Command - The SDMAIN-defined name that specifies the action to be taken. Common Domain - The primary name space for dictionary occurrences. It is provided with System Dictionary, is represented by a blank name, is owned by the core set, has a sensitivity of Public, and can never be modified or deleted. Compiled Dictionary - A read-only dictionary that contains metadata extracted from the master dictionary. A compiled dictionary consists of one or more flat files. Core Set - A predefined set of entity types, relationship types, relationship classes, attributes, and domains that are provided with System Dictionary. It also includes the scope CORESET, which owns everything in the core set. A second scope, the Dictionary Administrator scope, is included in the core set, and is also owned by the scope CORESET. DA scope - See Dictionary Administrator Scope. DCB - See Dictionary Control Block. Dictionary Administrator Scope - A special scope provided with the System Dictionary core set, which has unlimited access to all items in the dictionary, and ultimate authority. Dictionary Control Block - An array of data which contains information about the current status of the dictionary to an intrinsic. Dictionary Environment - The dictionary environment includes the name of the dictionary that is open, the scope, the open mode, the name mode, the domain, version, and version status that are used for creating and retrieving definitions. Domain - A name space within the dictionary. See Common Domain and Local Domain. E-R Model - See Entity-Relationship model. Entity - An entity is a description of an object in the information network, and belongs to a specific Entity Type. Entity List - The ordered list of entities that make up a relationship. Entity Type - An object in the dictionary structure that classifies entity occurrences. Each entity type is further defined by an associated set of attributes. Entity-Relationship Model - A logical structure that is general enough that it can describe most, if not all, of the information processing done on a computer network. The entity-relationship model is composed of entity types, relationship types, relationship classes and attributes. Environment - The computer system hardware and software required for the operation of System Dictionary. Extended Set - The user-created set of structure definitions within the dictionary; an extension of the Core Set. External Name - One of two names (see also Internal Name) assigned to every item in the dictionary. It is a customizable and localizable reference that is intended for dictionary end users. Homonym - The same name used for conceptually different entity occurrences of the same entity type. Internal Name - One of two names (see also External Name) assigned to every item in the dictionary. An internal name is not changeable, and is intended for use by software products used with System Dictionary which rely on specific names for identification purposes. Internal Number - An identification number automatically assigned to all dictionary components when they are created. These numbers may be read from the Status array (parameter) of intrinsics used for creation and retrieval of dictionary components and, when used, can greatly increase the efficiency and speed of some dictionary operations. Keyword-Clause - A keyword clause can be either a single keyword or a keyword followed by an equal sign (=) that is followed by either nothing, a single value, or a list of values separated by commas. The keywords are SDMAIN-defined, while their values are either SDMAIN defined or user-defined. Keyword clauses are separated by semicolons. List Terminator - A semicolon ( ; ) that indicates to the intrinsic using a specific list, that there are no more entries in the list. Local Domain - A user-created name space that separates a set of names, which includes names used for a different purpose. See also Common Domain. Locking - A process that allows only one user at a time to access the dictionary. System Dictionary provides two types of locking: automatic, which protects individual operations, and manual, which can protect a sequence of operations. Logging - A process that can automatically create a log of all dictionary transactions, providing a means to repeat those transactions in the event of data loss. Macro - A user-defined set of commands that you can save in a file and call using macro names. When you call the macro, each defined command is executed in the same way that it would have been had you entered each command individually. (SDMAIN only) Master Dictionary - A dictionary that consists of a database and multiple files. A master dictionary can be accessed by any of the System Dictionary intrinsics and commands. Merge - A process that combines structure, security, and occurrence date of one dictionary into the same or other dictionaries. Metadata - Descriptive information about data, but not the data itself. Example: a file card in a library, which contains information about a book, but is not the book itself; an address of a building, which provides information about its location, but is not the location itself. N-ary Relationship - A relationship that involves N entities, where 3<=N<=6 (see also Binary Relationship). Name mode - A parameter set while opening the dictionary, used to cause intrinsics to reference either internal or external names when accessing dictionary items. Name set - A group of names within the dictionary that includes names for any one of the following types of dictionary definitions: domains, versions in the same domain, entity types, relationship classes, attributes, scopes, and entity occurrences of a specific type that are located in the same domain. Object-Clause - The user-defined name of the object. This is the specific target of the action specified by the command. Occurrence - A specific instance of an entity or relationship. Open mode - One of five dictionary operating modes, set when opening the dictionary for use. Owner scope - A scope that is directly associated with an object in the dictionary and has all rights to it, because the scope has either created that object, or has been given ownership by the scope that created it or previously owned it. Parent Entity - The first entity in a relationship. Password - A combination of up to 32 special or alphanumeric characters, and/or blanks used for user identification purposes to limit access to data or objects within the dictionary. Preview - A process that allows the potential results of a merge operation to be seen before the actual merge operation is performed. Primary Name - The principal name of an entity, not a synonym, that is initially assigned when the entity is created. Whenever an entity name is returned by System Dictionary, the primary name is returned. Relationship - A logically connected, ordered series of two to six entities, which belongs to a specific Relationship Type. Relationship class - The specific class of association or logical connection between the entities in a relationship. Relationship position - The logical order of a child entity (the second entity in a relationship) relative to all other child entities for the same parent entity (the first entity in a relationship) of the same relationship type. Relationship type - An object in the dictionary structure that classifies relationship occurrences; a logical connection between entity types specified by a series of two to six ordered entity types and a relationship class. Each relationship type is further defined by an associated set of attributes. Restructuring - A process similar to compiling. Restructuring incorporates all changes made to the dictionary structure in a single session into the working dictionary, and reformats any dictionary occurrences that are affected by those structure changes. Scope - A security definition within the dictionary environment that sets the level of access a user has to all objects in the dictionary. It includes up to six scope rights. Scope Right - One of six specific capabilities associated with a scope. The scope right specifies which dictionary components that scope is allowed to manipulate. Security - A protection scheme within System Dictionary that limits access to objects in the dictionary to authorized users. The primary elements of dictionary security are scopes In addition, dictionary domains and occurrences each have a sensitivity, which further define their access by a specific scope. Sensitivity - An access right associated with a dictionary domain or occurrence. Special Attributes - The set of attributes that are automatically assigned to entity types and relationship types when the types are created. Status - Information about the success or failure of an intrinsic call. The status is returned as the final parameter of intrinsic calls. Structure - The part of System Dictionary that includes both core set and extended set entity types, relationship types, relationship classes, and attributes. Subcommand - The SDMAIN-defined name hat specifies the general target of the action. Synonym - An alternate name for an entity in the dictionary. A synonym must uniquely identify a given entity. Variable Length Attribute - An attribute whose value must be explicitly defined, and whose length is dependent upon that value. Example: an attribute description, whose value is sixty bytes of text. Therefore, the length of the attribute is sixty. Version - A set of occurrences within a domain, set apart from other sets within the domain.