October Vocabulary

Software (application): The programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of the hardware and direct its operation.


Shareware: Copyrighted software that is available free of charge on a trial basis, usually with the condition that users pay a fee for continued use and support.


Public domain: A domain not protected under patent or copyright.


Freeware: Software that is available for free, usually over the Internet.


Commercial software: Software that is designed and developed for sale to the general public.


Integrated Software: A collection of computer programs designed to work together to handle an application, either by passing data from one to another or as components of a single system.


User Manual: a technical communication document intended to give assistance to people using a particular system.


Registration card: A card issued for means of registering.


Serial Number: A number that is one of a series and is used for identification, as of a machine, weapon, or motor vehicle.


Warranty: A guarantee given to the purchaser by a company stating that a product is reliable and free from known defects and that the seller will, without charge, repair or replace defective parts within a given time limit and under certain conditions.


Copyright: The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work.


Multi-user license: A software license that allows more than one person to use the software.


Single user license: A software license that allows one person to use the software.


Site license: A license to use software within a facility.


Compression: The process by which data is compressed into a form that minimizes the space required to store or transmit it.


Decompression: The act of reversing data compression.

Back-up: To duplicate a file or program so that the original is not lost.

Back door (trapdoor): A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers.

Upload: To transfer (data or programs), usually from a peripheral computer or device to a central, often remote computer.

Download: To transfer (data or programs) from a server or host computer to one's own computer or device.

Wizard: Instructional help in an application or system development environment that guides the user through a series of multiple choice questions to accomplish a task.

Template: A document or file having a preset format, used as a starting point for a particular application so that the format does not have to be recreated each time it is used.

GUI: An interface for issuing commands to a computer utilizing a pointing device, such as a mouse, that manipulates and activates graphical images on a monitor.

Command-line Interface: On a display screen, the space following a prompt (such as $) where a text instruction to a computer or device is typed.

Voice recognition: The conversion of spoken words into computer text. Speech is first digitized and then matched against a dictionary of coded waveforms.

Field: An element of a database record in which one piece of information is stored.

Key field: A field in a segment or record that holds the value of a key to that record.

Record: A collection of related, often adjacent items of data, treated as a unit.

Search: To look for specific data in a file or an occurrence of text in a file.

Query: To interrogate a collection of data such as records in a database.

Sort: A group of data of the same general character.

Database Management System: A special data processing system, or part of a data processing system, which aids in the storage, manipulation, reporting, management, and control of data.

Mail Merge: The process of combining a form letter with a list of names and addresses to produce individualized letters.

Flat-file database: A database system in which each database contains only one file, which is not linked to any other file.

Relational database: A database system in which any database file can be a component of more than one of the database's tables.

Data redundancy: The occurrence of values for data elements more than once within a file or database.

Data integrity: the condition in which data is identically maintained during any operation such as transfer, storage or retrieval.