Enterprise Issues and Business Rules - Glossary

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Live for the moment and focus on the present. The techniques of systems analysis have evolved over the years to provide methods for describing many aspects of a business or government agency. Wecan now draw pictures of the way information flows through an organization, the sequence of actions an organization will follow, and the structure of its operating information. In some sense all of these constitute rules of business, but they have not covered a very important aspect, which is the set of rules that determine how a business operates. A conceptual model can represent the inherent operating structure of an organization. It can represent what is fundamentally possible in an organization. Depending on how it is constructed, it may also represent some of the constraints on an enterprise. As the model becomes more abstract, however, it describes fewer of these.

Data Integrity: The completeness and accuracy of data, including the validity of relationships between rows in related tables
Deadlock: A deadlock is a situation wherein two or more competing actions are waiting for the other to finish, and thus neither ever does.
Distributed Transaction: A transaction distributed across multiple SQL Servers
Expression: A column or a literal with a funcion or operation applied to it. Forexample, "CURRENT_SALARY+100" is an expression.
Function: A function is a set of PL/SQL code that is stored inside the database with a name. A function always returns a value. A function can use incoming parameters, but not outgoing parameters.
Lock: A marker imposed on a table or a row that prevents concurrent updates on the same table or row.
Lock level: The level to which a particular lock is imposed. Lock level can be either row (lock applies to one or more rows in a table), or table (lock applies to an entire table).
Lock mode: The source of the lock. Lock mode can be implicit (created automatically by the database) or explicit (imposed by program code.)
Nested: A nested transaction occurs when a new transaction is started by an instruction that is already inside an existing transaction. The new nested transaction is said to be nested within the existing transaction, hence the term.
Object privilege: These privileges allow a user to see objects.
Optimistic Locking: Optimistic locking is a technique for SQL database applications that does not hold row locks between selecting and updating or deleting a row.
Package: A stored sub-program that combines PL/SQL procedures and functions into a single unit.
Package body: The portion of the package that defines to underlying procedures and functions. In addition, other functions and procedures that are private (for use only within the package) may be defined.
Package specification: The portion of the package that defines all public (callable) procedures and functions including their parameters.
Parameter: A value passed to a PL/SQL stored object when it is executed. All types of PL/SQL stored objects except triggers can use parameters. Cursors also can use parameters. Parameters can be of nearly any datatype that can be defined within PL/SQL.
Privilege: Permissions to either perform tasks or access data in the database.
Role: A grouping of privileges that is given a name.
Stored function: A function that is stored as a named object in the database.
System privileges: These are permissions to do certain tasks in the database. For example, the capability to create a table is a system privilege.
Transaction: A set of SQL commands that are grouped together and either all succeed or all fail as a unit.
Transaction control: A command used inside PL/SQL to tell Oracle when one transaction starts and ends. For example, the COMMIT command ends a transaction.
Trigger: A stored sub-program that is similar to a procedure and is automatically executed by the database whenever a specified action occurs. The timing of a trigger specifies whether the trigger is executed before or after the action. The action of a trigger specifies activity in the database, such as a user updating one or more rows in a table. The scope of a trigger specifies whether the trigger fires once per row or once per transaction.