Information Management Glossary: A - M

A

Application Custodian: The branch director who sponsors projects to develop information systems, and provides ongoing support for those systems, to enable staff to meet business needs. This includes responsibility for systems releases, security matrix, processing needs, backup/recovery requirements, bridging requirements to current systems on other computing environments, etc. An Application Manager would carry out the day-to-day responsibilities that the Application Custodian is accountable for. See Guide S35, and Ministry of Forests Policy 7.3.
Application Development Environment (ADE): All tools and techniques used by an organization to deliver information systems.Technology, standards, and related considerations that pertain to application development, excluding the utilities, software services, operating system, network, and hardware platform. Examples include a repository; standard 3GLs or 4GLs; and system environments for development, test, and production.
Application Programming Interface (API): "The formally defined programming language interface between a program provided by a vendor and its user."
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM): A wide area network communications protocol with a high bandwidth.

B

Bandwidth: The transmission capacity of data over a network.
Build Table Exec (BTE): A Ministry of Forest-developed VM application which records database definition information for the SQL/DS development environment. This is used in conjunction with the on-line application dictionary to develop the database definition language.
Business Architecture: The business architecture stems from the business master platform and includes specific products and services that the enterprise will offer, talent pools it will recruit and organize, policies it will develop to govern corporate behaviour and value systems it will cultivate over time.
Business Master Platform: A business mater platform is a subset of reality that includes legal, geographic, human, competitive and technological opportunities and constraints that bear on how the enterprise must operate to succeed.
Business Process Automation: "BPA is the extension of end-user information access and services for complex business functions, beyond traditional data manipulation and record keeping activities, through the application of advanced technologies (e.g., object orientation, client/server, real-time systems, 'next-generation' CASE tools, etc.)."

C

CCSM: Canada Council on Surveying and Mapping, the custodian of national feature codes. The CCSM 1984 Draft Report on the classification of topological features is used as a government-wide standard. The Ministry of Forests uses this standard to create Feature Codes.
A Government Feature Codes Database has been set up by the Ministry of Sustainable Resources where users can query for feature codes maintained by the province.
Client/Server: "An application of co-operative processing in which the end-user interaction with the computing environment is through a programmable workstation that executes some portion of the application (beyond terminal emulation)."
"An architecture of co-operative processing with predefined roles for two types of components, clients and servers. The client is the driving or initiating component, typically on a workstation, delegating predefined types of tasks to a responding component satisfying the request, the server, for which it usually awaits a response. The server acts on behalf of a client for a predefined class of functions, e.g., database requests."
Control ID: see Feature ID
Co-operative Processing: "Two or more complementary programs interacting and executing concurrently on two or more machines (often different tiers) as part of an overall business function, whereby each component exploits the operating characteristics of its respective platform."
Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE): A CASE tool is "a software program that provides partial or total automation of at least one function within the software life cycle, e.g., entity relationship diagram editor, a data dictionary consistency checker or a code generator."
Upper CASE tools are "application development technologies which address problem definition, requirements specification, analysis and design. A tool for modelling applications requirements, systems analysis and data structure."; Lower CASE tools are "application development tools which address program and screen design and program development. Lower-CASE tools include screen painters, program generators and 4GLs." Integrated CASE (I-CASE) is "any cohesive set of unified CASE tool kits or CASE workbenches that support a large proportion of the systems development life cycle. The degree of integration among the tools can vary widely"; Integrated CASE (I-CASE) is "any cohesive set of unified CASE tool kits or CASE workbenches that support a large proportion of the systems development life cycle. The degree of integration among the tools can vary widely.
Conceptual Model: An initial system design (i.e. initial prototype) from information gathered during User Requirements and is used as the straw man for a Detail Design JAD.
Corporate Data: Data is Corporate if it is

vital to the ministry (i.e. critical to the ministry's business)

of a permanent nature (i.e. kept for a significant period of time)

within the ministry's mandate (i.e. part of the ministry's legal business)

Therefore, Non-corporate data is data that does not meet one or both of the above points. Non-corporate data may have a significant impact on an individual (e.g. if they lose/delete their personal calendar), but the organization's business on the whole won't be affected.

D

Data Administrator: The position in the Ministry responsible for leadership in managing information as a resource, analysis of data custodianship needs, conceptual design of data structures necessary to manage data custodianship, and enforcement of proper logical data design in the systems development process.
Data Custodian: The Data Custodian is responsible for deciding what data to collect (how much, how detailed, how accurate), how the data will be used and where to store/retrieve it. The Data Custodian is always a branch director and is the person ultimately accountable for ensuring that the data is properly defined and that it represents the business requirements. The branch director may delegate the day-to-day responsibilities of this job to another person (the Data Standards Manager).
Data Custodianship: Responsbility for data inventory (gathering and managing facts about business data required by the Ministry); data management (establishing policies, procedures, standards, and guidelines to attempt to improve the accuracy, timeliness, consistency, standardization, and worth of information); data sharing (promoting data sharing by obtaining concurrence of opinion of information needs throughout the Ministry, and encouraging the joint funding or sponsorship of databases across departmental, application, and political boundaries); and data conflicts (attempting to resolve or prevent conflicts in data ownership, use, interpretation, and meaning, and functioning as negotiator and arbitrator to achieve such compromises). See ISB's System Development Guides, Guide S35, Management Guide to Custodianship.
Data Definition Language (DDL): A series of Structured Query Language (SQL) commands used to define objects.
Data Maturity Categories: In any large organization, data is defined, collected, transformed, used, summarized and reported for the purpose of making business decisions. The value of such data is commensurate with the amount of resources that went into its definition, collection, and use. Data that is collected in an ad-hoc manner with no standard method is of far less value than data defined for a business purpose that has been thought through and agreed on by all affected business staff. Data collected using a common standard can be thought of as being more "mature" and more useful to the organization. The Data Maturity Categories are: Non-Corporate Data, Local Corporate Data, Extended Corporate Data, and Full Corporate. Data. See also: Corporate Data
Data Resource Manager: The staff responsible for collecting data at the field level, although ultimate accountability rests with the senior manager of the office (e.g. District Manager). The Data Resource Manager (DRM) is accountable for collecting Corporate data to the standards set by the Data Custodian. The DRM is a key role for the ministry: where Full Corporate data does not exist, they will determine what data is important enough to begin moving into the Extended Corporate category. See Statements of Responsibility for Data Resource Managers.
Data Standards Manager: The Data Custodian (usually the director of a branch) may delegate the day-to-day responsibilities of custodianship to another staff member known as the Data Standards Manager. This staff person does not necessarily have a management classification -- it is the person who does the day-to-day management of the data standards, for the Data Custodian. See MoF list of DSMs.
Data Warehouse: "A mechanism for supporting strategic decision making, [based on] the belief that the nature of data to support that function is inherently different from transaction-oriented operational data." The "notion [ ] emphasises decision-support needs directed at 'atomic' data derived from operational databases."
"Building a data warehouse [ ] means that the sources of that data have to be identified in operational systems, and [ ] it means defining a new data model to support the decision-making requirements."; Also see "informational data" and "operational data".
Database: A repository of database tables that has built-in management for inserting, updating, and deleting elements of any one table, and for maintaining table integrity.
Database Management System (DBMS): Database Management System. DBMS is a tool that provides comprehensive support for storage and management of corporate data. It provides an environment to support distributed database, referential integrity, two phase commit, sophisticated security, and a high level of transaction processing support.
Database Table: A repository of data of which users are aware and from which data can be read repeatedly and non-destructively. A table contains all occurrences of data whose structure is defined by an entity, i.e. the CLIENT table would contain each client known to the Ministry, along with all other information identified by the CLIENT entity (such as NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE, etc). This is essentially the information contained within an entity type, but implemented physically as a table in a computer system database.
Distributed Computing Environment (DCE): DCE is a specification by the Open Software Foundation (OSF) of services for interoperability of applications on heterogeneous platforms. It comprises "two service sets: fundamental services including naming, timing, threading, security and RPC [ ] and data-sharing services, including a distributed file system and PC support."
Distributed Data Centre (DDC): The term used to describe the sixty plus standard LANs throughout the ministry of Forests, which are locally supported and managed, to indicate that they are a distributed component of the ministry's technology infrastructure.
Distributed Database: "A DBMS that enables end users or application programmers to view a collection of physically separate databases as one logical single-system image. The concept that is most fundamental to DDBMS [distributed DBMS] is location transparency, namely that the user should not be conscious of the actual location of data."
Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA): A data access protocol by IBM to enable LAN workstations to process data from DB2 databases anywhere on the network.
District Office System Specialist (DOSS): The title used by the Ministry of Forests for an information technologist in a district office.

E

Enhancement: Larger cost work that adds functionality, or addresses missing functionality to the application.
Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA): "In terms of tangible deliverables, then, an EIA is at its core the APIs that an enterprise's developers will use and the hardware and software products that will support them, with attendant rationale, transition planning, and resource projection."
"Key enabling components [are] application development environment, target operating systems and target hardware platforms."
Enterprise Server Platform: "An ESP [is] an inherently distributable, multiply interoperable server that is engineered for use within a larger IT architecture and that transparently provides services to any authorised client. [ ] an ESP is essentially a collection of services that can be distributed across several computers to gain advantages in price/performance, in system availability and in such platform services as dedicated file and print, fault-tolerant servers and electronic mail gateways."
"An enterprise server platform (ESP) can be considered a single system, despite its deployment across multiple nodes, hardware architectures and operating systems. Programmers should view the ESP as a common set of APIs. To client systems it should be a common set of interconnection, data access and program interaction protocols."
Entity Type: A definition of structure for a collection of uniquely identifiable facts about people, places, things, or concepts that are of fundamental importance to the Ministry's business, and to which a specific definition and common attributes apply.; Example: A client's name, address, and phone number is information important to the Ministry is order to do business with that client, and the information requirements are defined by the Entity Type CLIENT, identified by CLIENT_NUMBER, containing attributes NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE, etc. (The information would actually be stored in a database table, i.e. see example in the definition of Database Table).
Extended Data: Extended data is corporate data that is used locally (e.g. in the district(s)). It differs from Local corporate data in that some energy has been put into defining Extended data from a ministry-wide context. See also: Corporate Data.

F

Feature: (also known as spatial feature) A business item of interest that, as part of its vital information, is directly associated with a geographic location: i.e. a geographic object or unit of geographic data. Every distinct item of geographic data of interest to the Ministry of Forests is a feature.
Features have a Feature Class Name and a Feature Code to specify what type of feature it is (e.g. lake, opening, road, recreation trail, etc.). Features also have a Feature ID to uniquely identify each instance of the Feature (e.g. to identify Lake Okanagan from Christina Lake). There is also some spatial and attribute data associated with each feature.; For example, a Forest Cover Polygon would have a Feature Code, a Feature ID, associated linework and an inside point, and some associated attribute data such as Leading Tree Species Type.
Feature Class: A Feature class is defined to classify and describe a geographic feature. A "feature" differs from a "feature class" in that the feature is an instance of the feature class. For example, "Lake" is a feature class while "Nitinat Lake", "Christina Lake" and "Lake Okanagan" are features. Other examples of feature classes are: Opening, Forest Cover, Range Unit, Recreation Trail, Resource Management Zone, Biogeoclimatic Zone, Forest District, etc.
Feature Code Number/Feature Code: Geographic features are classified using a feature class name (e.g. lake, road, trail, etc.) and are "encoded" using a Feature Code Number and a Feature Code. Feature Code Number and Feature Code both serve the same purpose - they are used to uniquely identify the "type" of feature and are more useful than a name which is more likely to change.
Feature classes and feature codes are useful in that they can be used to manage and reference groups of features in order to perform certain operations. They enable us to associate other descriptive information with a feature such as whether it's a point, line or polygon, a description for it, what symbology is used (e.g. level, colour, line weight, etc.) and so on.; The Feature Code Number is stored as a numeric value (e.g. 16025 might be the Feature Code Number for the "Resource Management Zone" feature class). The Feature Code is an 10-character alphanumeric value, starting with 2 letters, followed by 8 digits (e.g. AR24400000 might be the Feature Code for "Resource Management Zone").; The Feature Code is used government-wide and is generated in compliance with the Canada Council on Surveys and Mapping (CCSM) 1984 Draft Report on the classification of topographic features. A Government Feature Codes Database has been set up by the Ministry of Environment where users can query for feature codes maintained by the province.; The Ministry of Forests currently uses the Microstation platform for spatial data capture and the Microstation platform cannot use a feature code which has an alphanumeric value. For this reason, the Ministry decided to create the Feature Code Number - it has the same business use as Feature Code but is stored as a numeric value. The Feature Code Number exists only within the Ministry of Forests.
Feature ID: In order to uniquely identify features stored by the Ministry it is important that each feature have a unique key. Historically, spatial and attribute data have co-existed in separate worlds - attribute data is typically stored in relational databases and spatial data is captured and stored on CAD or GIS platforms. The only way of linking the two together was by storing unique identifiers as labels in the spatial data, generating a map and then manually associating the labels with unique identifiers stored in the attribute database.; One of the initial goals of the INCOSADA project was to provide a physical link between the spatial and attribute databases. A unique key, known as the Feature ID, was created, consisting of two fields, the Control ID and Generated Number.; The Control ID was created to meet the requirement that business areas be able to generate feature ids, independent of location and program area (e.g. a LIM operator in Dawson Creek should have complete control over the feature ids generated at that site and the feature ids must still be unique over the entire province). Each business area or location, therefore, may have one or more Control IDs assigned to it and can then freely assign Generated Numbers under each Control ID.; The Generated Number is implemented as a sequential number or counter and is used to identify one instance of a feature within a business area. When used in addition with the Control ID, the key is unique within the province.; The Business Design Branch is the custodian of Feature ID. They will be establishing processes to control the allocation of Control IDs and Generated Numbers.
Full Corporate Data: Full Corporate data is the most mature data, where a Data Custodian has defined ministry standards for its definition, collection, entry, and use. Full Corporate data can be further broken into Shared (used by several business areas) and Program-Specific (all collection and use is within the same line program -- e.g. lightning location data). Most Full Corporate data is Shared.
Function: A normal or characteristic action of the Ministry which is a continuous major activity and must be accomplished to satisfy the mission of the Ministry. A major act, operation, role, or duty for which authority, responsibility, and jurisdiction has been determined. Continuous in time.

G

GDBC: Geographic Data B.C., the branch of the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks responsible for provincial mapping standards and the TRIM project.
Generated Number: see Feature ID
Graphical User Interface (GUI): A term given to an interface such as Windows that provides more than a text based interface such as MS-DOS. A GUI usually includes a mouse and has a rich set of tools or widgets such as icons, radio buttons, windows, maximize and minimize buttons.

H

Historical Data: Corporate data that has been copied, summarised, or transformed, and is stored permanently; usually for the purpose of comparing it to other data in the future to look for business trends. Essentially, historical data has had the dimension of time added.
See also Archived Data.

I

IGDS: (Interactive Graphics Design Software created by Intergraph). This binary file format is a standard in the turnkey CAD market and has become a de facto standard in Canada's mapping industry. The Microstation CAD platform uses IGDS file format and is the standard CAD tool used by the Ministry of Forests.
INCOSADA: The Integrated Corporate Spatial and Attribute Database is a project intended to standardize and streamline the handling of spatial data within the Ministry of Forests.
Information Access (IAC): The Information Access Project provides the means to get copies of mainframe data to a distributed data center. It will utilize the Data Delivery System for transporting the data. This facility will enable custodians of applications to provide reporting capabilities to distributed data centers.
Information Engineering (IE): "The application of an interlocking set of formal techniques for the planning, analysis, design and construction of information systems, applied on an enterprise-wide basis or across a major sector of an enterprise."
Information Engineering Facility (IEF): An integrated CASE tool set from Texas Instruments which is used by the Ministry of Forests for data modelling.

J

Joint Application Design (JAD): A process where the clients and developers interact to design applications.

K

L

Legacy Technology: Information technology which does not have the characteristics of contemporary technology, such as openness, client-server design, or relational data model.
Level: Levels allow data to be input into a Geographic Information System as separate themes and overlaid based on analysis requirements. Levels are completely user definable and are also known as: layers, theme, and coverage.
Local Area Network (LAN): Two or more computing units connected for local resource sharing. A network in which communications are limited to a moderate-sized geographic area, such as a single office building, warehouse, or campus, and that do not extend across public rights-of-way.
Local Corporate Data: Local Corporate data is data that has context in the local program only. For example, this may be data collected to often different standards but still shared among multiple districts (with the associated formatting and translation problems!). Staff using this data generally know its limitations and are careful. What sets Local data apart from Non-corporate data is the fact that the data is vital to the ministry's business, and is permanent.

M

Maintenance: Addresses deficient and/or emerging lower cost functional requirements. Also addresses issues affecting routine operations, such as Hardware, Software and Data issues.
Metadata: Data attributes that record information about data requirements of an application (data about data). The definition used by the ministry limits metadata to information not recorded by the application (update userid would not be considered metadata, but rather data recorded by the application. The userid of the person who added update userid to the database would be considered metadata).
Method: A method is a function performed on a window or object through program coding.
Methodology: A description of the techniques and steps used to identify, organise and transform business requirements into application systems