Relevant Terminology
- Jester
- The graphical interface program that helps you use BMD databases.
- Bmd
- The BMD platform software.
- A database made for the BMD platform software. See
database.
- (informal) Any combination of BMD, Jester, or the database(s) they work with.
- Bmdnet
- (informal) My nickname for the collective userbase of Jester/BMD.
- bookmark
- A website name recorded for personal reference. Most browsers have a bookmarking
feature that allows the user to record a site name and access it through pull-down
menus so it does not have to be retyped later. In IE, these are in the "Favorites"
menu.
- hostsurvey
- The program that automatically updates and maintains databases by comparing them to
similar databases on the internet. hostsurvey is part of the BMD software platform.
- The act of running the bmdhostsurvey program. i.e. "I did another hostsurvey this
morning." Aka host survey or just "survey".
- Perl
- The programming language that Jester and BMD use. Perl is not my code. See their
home page.
- Gtk
- The graphics libraries that Jester use from home page.
- PostgreSQL
- The home page.
Aka Postgres or Postgre
- MySQL
- An alternative
home page. Aka MySQL AB (or is that a company name?)
- RDBMS
- Relational DataBase Management System. An RDBMS is a large software application that
can handle the storage and management of several generic databases for virtually any
purpose. Bmd is intended to mimic one, I have no intention of creating a new one (too
hard). Oracle, Informix, and Sybase are popular commercial examples. MySQL and
PostgreSQL are popular free examples.
- indexfile (depreciated)
- A file usually called (something).bmd . This is basically the header file or config
file for a database (version 0.1.0). It contains all the info necessary to find the other
files that make up a database. There are no indexfiles in future versions. Aka bmd file.
- database
- Collection of tables, records, values, and other files that a single maintainer network
maintains. Aka bmd.
- (informal) A maintainer network is
sometimes mistakenly called a database. Learn to appreciate the phrase "The network is
the database."
- maintainer network
- The group of Bmd users that collaborate to build personal bookmark collections on a
single topic. Each topic covered by Bmd software gets its own separate maintainer network.
This is similar to the newsgroup system where each group has one topic, but people can
join several goups. It generally takes affirmative action to send something to several
groups at a time.
- instance
- Each user has his own "copy" of the databases he maintains, but they aren't really
copies. Disagreements over rejects and schemas can cause perpetual differences. Even
under universal agreement, records can appear in different relative position orders. Due
to these conflicts, I prefer to call each "copy" an instance or derivative. Your instance
is your version of the database on your harddrive. The word "instance" is one of those
tech terms that means several things. Aka
derivitive.
- In Database theory, an instance is any single example of any database. It could be a
stagnant snapshot of one or a dynamic collection running on a server. This meaning is what
I am trying to borrow for definition one.
- In Object Oriented Programming, an instance is a single working example of a class
running in a program's memory.
- derivitive
- Each user has his own "copy" of the databases he maintains, but they aren't really
copies. Disagreements over rejects and schemas can cause perpetual differences. Even
under universal agreement, records can appear in different relative position orders. Due
to these conflicts, I prefer to call each "copy" an derivitive or instance. Your derivitive
is your version of the database on your harddrive. The word "derivitive" comes from the
Copyright term "derivitive work". The databases we run are derivitive works of each other.
Aka instance.
- view
- A human-friendly dipiction of several tables'
data combined into one display that often looks like another table, but really isn't.
- table
- Rectangular collection of records and
fields. This is what jester usually shows under
each notebook tab. Aka relation. Classic example:
| alice | 18 | accounting |
| bob | 28 | marketing |
| chris | 24 | engineering |
- (programmer term) Gtk widget used to display
each table (def1) in Jester.
- dataspace
- Group of tables that are updated the same way by
hostsurvey. A table is in either the "normal", "reject", "static", or "bmdsystem"
dataspace. To my knowledge, this is not a traditional database term. I just made it up,
because the hostsurvey has to treat tables four different ways.
- member directory (depreciated)
-
- A directory on your harddrive dedicated to storing the files of a bmd database.
BMD uses it as a default search path when it can't find files listed in a database's
indexfile. There are no member directories in
future versions.
- record
- One row or line of data in a table. Aka tuple,
row, entry, line (possibly others). i.e.
| alice | 18 | accounting |
| rec -> | bob | 28 | marketing | <- record |
| chris | 24 | engineering |
- field:
- One column in a table.
- (informal) One value in a record. See value. i.e.
| field1 | field2 | field3 |
| alice | 18 | accounting |
| bob | 28 | marketing |
| chris | 24 | engineering |
| ^field1 | ^field2 | ^field |
- value
- A single piece of data in a record or field. The individual cells in Jester each
show a single value. The intersection of any row and any column. Aka entry. i.e.
| alice | 18 | accounting |
| value -> | bob<- | 28 | marketing |
| chris | 24 | engineering |
- entry
- Informal word for record. See record.
- Informal word for value. See value.
- (programmer term) Gtk widget used for each
cell in Jester.
- primary key
- One or more fields that are used to uniquely name a record.
- epoch relative form
- The "epoch", (rhymes with epic) is a point in time: 12:00:00 AM January 1, 1970
GMT (for UNIX anyway). Epoch relative form is a way of representing time as the
number of seconds that have passed since the epoch. It's a very common "native form"
for time in computer system, though it's not very user-friendly. The current time
is over 1 billion seconds since the Epoch. Future versions of Bmd will not display this
time format, but it may still be useful as a programmer term.
- relation
- see table
definition 1.
- tuple
- see record
definition 1.
- row
- see record
definition 1.
- column
- see field
definition 1.
- line
- see record
definition 1.