Information Management Glossary: N - Z

N

Non-Corporate Data: Non-corporate data is data that is completely ad-hoc; there are no common standards whatsoever. For example, meeting notices, agendas, meeting minutes and personal calendars.

O

Object: An object is any item within a window. For example frame, list box, toolbar, command button, text box, picture, etc.; In the sense of "object-oriented", a level "of abstraction that [includes] attributes and behaviour", "associating methods (procedures) with objects that can benefit from class hierarchies."; "Object orientation is a paradigm for the analysis, design and programming of software systems, as well as a model for managing complex data. [ ] It embodies concepts such as data abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, message passing and polymorphisms."
Object Model: "Current leading object models are primarily focusing on document usage. They simplify the creation and management of compound documents, where elements of the document are created and maintained by diverse applications. [ ] Distributed object models enable the objects to be used across the network, and, additionally, have facilities for object activation and information passing."
Object Request Broker (ORB): "Object brokers provide for the distribution of objects across heterogeneous platforms."; "The principle behind the architecture is to allow interoperability between heterogeneous systems through the mechanisms of messages passing between ‘objects’, an object being ‘an identifiable, encapsulated entity that provides one or more services that can be requested by a client.’ Thus everything is an object - a remote printer, a document, a legacy application. For this interoperability to be achieved a ‘broker’ is required - software logic that can interpret the request being made, decide whether it should be routed, perform security checks, maybe even decide which particular method should be invoked in real time for an object, and concealing the intricacies of communications protocols. Much of the underlying technology exploits proven RPC mechanisms [ ], but the interfaces are abstracted to make the accessing of remote objects far more transparent."; "ORB (Object Request Broker) [is also] a ‘standard’ defined by the OMG [Object Management Group, a vendor consortium] that consists of the mechanisms to allow centralised communication between networked objects."
On-line Application Dictionary (OAD): A ministry of forest developed application dictionary which resides on the VM and records limited physical development objects for this environment.
Open System: "A system whose interfaces (e.g., APIs or protocols) conform to formal, multilateral, generally available industry standards. ‘Formal’ implies that the standard is selected and maintained using a structured, public process. ‘Multilateral’ implies that [ ] the standard is not controlled by a single vendor. ‘Generally available’ implies that the specifications are fully published (preferably with source code of a reference implementation), and that anyone can readily obtain license rights for free or at low cost."
Officials of Primary Interest (Os.P.I.): Officials of various components of the Ministry who are peripherally involved or who have primary interest in an item.
Operational Data: Data that is not necessarily corporate, collected and used on a day-to-day basis by line staff in the normal course of their duties, but is not collected with rigor or to defined, published, exacting standards. Staff who use Operational data must be careful what assumptions they make about it (e.g. regarding accuracy, precision, method used to collect); Example - bank account: the balance calculated in the chequebook - may be inaccurately added or subtracted but is close enough to give value. The balance calculated in the actual bank book is the truly accurate ("corporate" in this example) data. Example - Forests business - Extra information collected by district staff about an Opening.
Organizational Unit: Specific types of administrative offices within the divisional structure of the Ministry, such as district office, regional office, headquarters branch. See Organizational Unit in Guide S38.

P

Spatial data for which each data point is correctly positioned in the geographic coordinate system, and which has not been broken or displaced for cartographic reasons.

Process

An activity that is repeatedly executed within the enterprise, each execution of which produces a specific effect on information entities. Discrete in time. Includes a short description of the purpose of this process or the results that it achieves.

An Elementary Process, in information engineering terms, is the lower level of process and, when complete, leaves the business in a consistent state. That is,

output is complete and meaningful (useful) to the business
on completion, all business rules identified in the data model (e.g. mandatory relationships) must be satisfied

Proof of Concept

The development of a legitimate application which proves the workability of a proposed hardware or software solution.

Q

R

Rapid Application Development (RAD): The use of prototyping in an iterative development life cycle to rapidly develop applications.
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID): A computer fault tolerance technique which stages backup data over an array of disks so that the loss of any one of the disks does not abort the computer system.
Relational Database Management System (RDBMS): A subset of DBMS which manages a database comprised of related two dimensional tables.
Relationship: A type of connection or business association of interest or meaning that can exist between two entity types. Identifies the business reason (rule) within the Ministry why two or more entity types may be associated.
Remote Procedure Call (RPC): A process (API) by which a client instructs a server (or DBMS) to execute a program routine.; "A facility for embedding subroutine calls within an application on one [ ] system, which then invokes execution of a routine residing on another [ ] system. The systems pass parameters to communicate the specifications of the necessary processing."; "A mechanism that extends the notion of local procedure call to a fully distributed computing environment, enabling an application to be distributed among multiple systems in a way that is highly transparent to the application-level code."
Reporting Database: A stand-alone subject database that contains relatively current (usually within a few weeks) corporate data that has been copied, summarised, or transformed, and is refreshed periodically for the purpose of near-online querying of near-current data.
Repository: "A product or capability offering a single point of definition for all enterprise objects."; "A facility for storing descriptions and behaviours of an enterprise's objects, including requirements, policies, processes, data, software libraries, projects, platforms and personnel - with the potential of supporting both software development and operation management."; A "CASE Repository [is] a database that contains information used during the applications development process such as object models, data models, function models, data-flow models, system structure models, database schema definitions, user interface specifications and so on. The repository is the key component of a CASE system since it maintains information used during all phases of development."
Representational data: Spatial data which may have data points moved from their actual geographic location or completely deleted in order to make printed copies of the map more readable.
Rollback: A database error recovery technique which helps to prevent partial update of the database due to a system malfunction by rolling back update transactions that are not fully complete.

S

Standard Query Language (SQL): A standard syntax to communicate with relational databases.
Steward: A sub-class of Custodian. A Custodian may delegate how information is stored and retrieved to a Steward, if the Custodian does not have the appropriate operational resources available to provide the necessary functions.
Strategic Data: Further synthesis and comparison with past synthesised data to determine possible trends; Information = f(data); Example - bank account: Strategic data would be created for trend analysis (Am I withdrawing more now compared to last year? Am I visiting the bank more i.e. greater number of transactions?); Forests business - examine number of invoices produced each year over several years; examine number of Minister's letters received each year over several years (trends, district/region summaries, ...).
Subject Area: An identifiable topic which articulates the essential nature of the resources, disciplines, motives, ideas, knowledge within the Ministry. A group of entity types pertaining to a major topic of interest to the Ministry.
Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC): Describes all the distinct phases for an application development approach.

T

Tactical Data: Some kind of synthesis or summary of Transactional data; Information = *data; Example - bank account: monthly or yearly summaries - Total deposited/withdrawn this month; Average monthly deposit/withdrawal total for past year; Forests business - synthesis of Transactional data (total number of clients, credit ratings, volume of wood by tenure, etc).
Topology: A mathematical concept that allows us to structure data based on the principles of feature adjacency and feature connectivity. It is the method used to define spatial relationships.
Transactional Data: Example - bank account: daily deposits and withdrawals; the day-to-day transactions. Example - Forests business - normal day-to-day stuff (clients, tenures, assets, openings, etc).
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP): A de facto standard networking protocol originally designed for UNIX based LANs and the Internet.
Trigger: The ability of a DBMS to invoke a program routine when a defined event occurs in a database.
TRIM: The Terrain Resource Inventory Mapping program is a initiative coordinated by GDBC to produce digital basline thematic data for the entire province.

U

User Profile: The description of a particular user's attributes and permissions that the system assigns to that user's logon ID to define their interaction with system resources.

V

W

Warranty: Work that is still part of the contract to make the application meet the functional requirements, based on the approved project documentation, at no additional cost to the Ministry.

Wide Area Network (WAN): A network of remote LANs linked by bridges, routers, or gateways.