Glossary

An entry in the access control list that grants or denies access to a given principal.

A list of access control entries that determines which principals have access to a given resource or resources.

Access Control Entry. See access control entry.

Access Control List. See access control list.

Application Program Interface. See application program interface.

A set of public programmatic interfaces that consist of a language and message format to communicate with an operating system or other programmatic environment, such as databases, Web servers, JVMs, and so forth. These messages typically call functions and methods available for application development.

A server designed to host applications and their environments, permitting server applications to run. A typical example is OAS, which is able to host Java, C, C++, and PL/SQL applications in cases where a remote client controls the interface. See also Oracle Application Server.

A property of an element that consists of a name and a value separated by an equals sign and contained within the start-tags after the element name. In this example, <Price units='USD'>5</Price>, units is the attribute and USD is its value, which must be in single or double quotes. Attributes may reside in the document or DTD. Elements may have many attributes but their retrieval order is not defined.

Business Components for Java, a J2EE application development framework that comes with JDeveloper. BC4J is an object-relational mapping tool that implements J2EE Design Patterns.

External binary files that exist outside the database tablespaces residing in the operating system. BFILEs are referenced from the database semantics, and are also known as External LOBs.

A large object datatype whose content consists of binary data. Additionally, this data is considered raw because its structure is not recognized by the database.

See binary large object.

A term describing the communication between businesses in the selling of goods and services to each other. The software infrastructure to enable this is referred to as an exchange.

A term describing the communication between businesses and consumers in the selling of goods and services.

A programmatic technique in which one process starts another and then continues. The second process then calls the first as a result of an action, value, or other event. This technique is used in most programs that have a user interface to allow continuous interaction.

A stored program in Java or PL/SQL that adds the necessary functionality for the database to understand and manipulate a new datatype. Cartridges interface through the Extensibility Framework within Oracle8 or later. Oracle Text is such a cartridge, adding support for reading, writing, and searching text documents stored within the database.

A simple mechanism for adding style (fonts, colors, spacing, and so on) to Web documents.

See character data.

See Common Gateway Interface.

Text in a document that should not be parsed is put within a CDATA section. This allows for the inclusion of characters that would otherwise have special functions, such as &, <, >, and so on. CDATA sections can be used in the content of an element or in attributes.

An element that is wholly contained within another, which is referred to as its parent element. For example <Parent><Child></Child></Parent> illustrates a child element nested within its parent element.

A utility that accepts an input file and creates a set of output classes that have corresponding functionality. In the case of the XML Class Generator, the input file is a DTD and the output is a series of classes that can be used to create XML documents conforming with the DTD.

The operating system environmental variable that the JVM uses to find the classes it needs to run applications.

The term used to describe the application architecture where the actual application runs on the client but accesses data or other external processes on a server across a network.

The LOB datatype whose value is composed of character data corresponding to the database character set. A CLOB can be indexed and searched by the Oracle Text search engine.

See character large object.

The interface method in which the user enters in commands at the command interpreter prompt.

The programming interfaces enabling Web servers to run other programs and pass their output to HTML pages, graphics, audio, and video sent to browsers.

An Object Management Group standard for communicating between distributed objects across a network. These self-contained software modules can be used by applications running on different platforms or operating systems. CORBA objects and their data formats and functions are defined in the Interface Definition Language (IDL), which can be compiled in a variety of languages including Java, C, C++, Smalltalk and COBOL.

The library of functions written in C that provides developers the ability to create code that can be easily ported to virtually any platform and operating system.

The body of a resource is what you get when you treat the resource like a file and ask for its contents. Content is always an XMLType.

See Common Object Request Broker API.

See Cascading Style Sheets.

A DAD is a named set of configuration values used for database access. A DAD specifies information such as the database name or the Oracle Net service name, the ORACLE_HOME directory, and Globalization Support configuration information such as language, sort type, and date language.

A text fragment, which may be in XML format, that is returned to the requester embedded in an HTML page from a SQL query processed by the XSQL Servlet.

The datatype used for storing instances of the datatype that permits XPath-based navigation of database schemas.

The term used as the tag name designating the DTD or its reference within an XML document. For example, <!DOCTYPE person SYSTEM "person.dtd"> declares the root element name as person and an external DTD as person.dtd in the file system. Internal DTDs are declared within the DOCTYPE declaration.

Oracle XML DB uses the Document Location Hint to determine which XML schemas are relevant to processing the instance document. It assumes that the Document Location Hint will map directly to the URL used when registering the XML schema with the database. When the XML schema includes elements defined in multiple namespaces, an entry must occur in the schemaLocation attribute for each of the XML schemas. Each entry consists of the namespace declaration and the Document Location Hint. The entries are separated from each other by one or more whitespace characters. If the primary XML schema does not declare a target namespace, then the instance document also needs to include a noNamespaceSchemaLocation attribute that provides the Document Location Hint for the primary XML schema.

An in-memory tree-based object representation of an XML document that enables programmatic access to its elements and attributes. The DOM object and its interface is a W3C recommendation. It specifies the Document Object Model of an XML Document including the APIs for programmatic access. DOM views the parsed document as a tree of objects.

A set of rules that define the allowable structure of an XML document. DTDs are text files that derive their format from SGML and can either be included in an XML document by using the DOCTYPE element or by using an external file through a DOCTYPE reference.

See Document Object Model.

To assure the integrity and accuracy of this data, for example, when regenerating XML documents stored in Oracle XML DB, Oracle XML DB uses a data integrity mechanism, called DOM fidelity. DOM fidelity refers to when the returned XML documents are identical to the original XML document, particularly for purposes of DOM traversals. Oracle XML DB assures DOM fidelity by using a binary attribute, SYS_XDBPD$.

See Document Type Definition.

Electronic Data Interchange.

The basic logical unit of an XML document that can serve as a container for other elements such as children, data, and attributes and their values. Elements are identified by start-tags, such as <name>, and end-tags, such as </name>, or in the case of empty elements, <name/>.

An element without text content or child elements. It can only contain attributes and their values. Empty elements are of the form <name/> or <name></name>, where there is no space between the tags.

An independent program module that runs within a JVM on the server. CORBA provides the infrastructure for EJBs, and a container layer provides security, transaction support, and other common functions on any supported server.

An element without text content or child elements. It may only contain attributes and their values. Empty elements are of the form <name/> or <name></name> where there is no space between the tags.

A string of characters that may represent either another string of characters or special characters that are not part of the document character set. Entities and the text that is substituted for them by the parser are declared in the DTD.

The SQL operator that returns a TRUE or FALSE based upon the existence of an XPath within an XMLType.

An open standard for describing data developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) using a subset of the SGML syntax and designed for Internet use.

The language used within stylesheets to transform or render XML documents. There are two W3C recommendations covering XSL stylesheets—XSL Transformations (XSLT) and XSL Formatting Objects (XSLFO).

XSL consists of two W3C recommendations: XSL Transformations for transforming one XML document into another and XSL Formatting Objects for specifying the presentation of an XML document. XSL is a language for expressing stylesheets. It consists of two parts:

• A language for transforming XML documents (XSLT), and

• An XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics (XSLFO).

An XSL stylesheet specifies the presentation of a class of XML documents by describing how an instance of the class is transformed into an XML document that uses the formatting vocabulary.

The W3C standard specification that defines an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics. See FOP.

Also written as XSL-T. The XSL W3C standard specification that defines a transformation language to convert one XML document into another.

The SQL operator that retrieves fragments of XML documents stored as XMLType.

A directory or node in the Oracle XML DB repository that contains or can contain a resource. A folder is also a resource.

A feature in Oracle XML DB that allows content to be stored in a hierarchical structure of resources.

Print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects. It is a Java application that reads a formatting object tree and then renders the resulting pages to a specified output. Output formats currently supported are PDF, PCL, PS, SVG, XML (area tree representation), Print, AWT, MIF and TXT. The primary output target is PDF.

A database index that, when created, permits the results of known queries to be returned much more quickly.

The SQL operator that is part of Oracle Text and used for querying XMLType datatypes for the existence of a specific XPath.

The data relating a folder to its children is managed by the Oracle XML DB hierarchical index, which provides a fast mechanism for evaluating path names similar to the directory mechanisms used by operating system filesystems. Any path name-based access will normally use the Oracle XML DB hierarchical index.

See Hypertext Markup Language.

See Hypertext Transport Protocol.

See Hypertext Transport Protocol, Secure.

The datatype used for storing instances of the datatype that permits XPath-based navigation of database schemas in remote databases.

The method of creating and publishing text documents in which users can navigate between other documents or graphics by selecting words or phrases designated as hyperlinks.

The markup language used to create the files sent to Web browsers and that serves as the basis of the World Wide Web. The next version of HTML will be called XHTML and will be an XML application.

The application protocol used for transporting HTML files across the Internet between Web servers and browsers.

The use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) as a sub-layer under the regular HTTP application layer. Developed by Netscape.

See Internet Application Server.

See Integrated Development Environment.

See Internet File System.

The SQL operator that is part of Oracle Text and is used for querying XMLType datatypes for searching for specific text within a specific XPath.

A term used in object-based languages such as Java and C++ to refer to the creation of an object of a specific class.

A set of programs designed to aid in the development of software run from a single user interface. JDeveloper is an IDE for Java development, because it includes an editor, compiler, debugger, syntax checker, help system, and so on, to permit Java software development through a single user interface.

The collection of complex datatypes and their access in Oracle. These include text, video, time-series, and spatial data.

The protocol used by CORBA to exchange messages on a TCP/IP network such as the Internet.

See Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition.

A high-level programming language developed and maintained by Sun Microsystems where applications run in a virtual machine known as a JVM. The JVM is responsible for all interfaces to the operating system. This architecture permits developers to create Java applications that can run on any operating system or platform that has a JVM.

The Java platform (Sun Microsystems) that defines multitier enterprise computing.

Enables applications to parse and transform XML documents using an API that is independent of a particular XML processor implementation.

API and tools that map to and from XML documents and Java objects. A JSR recommendation.

An independent program module that runs within a JVM, typically for creating user interfaces on the client. Also known as Java Bean. The server equivalent is called an Enterprise JavaBean (EJB). See also Enterprise JavaBean.

The programming API that enables Java applications to access a database through the SQL language. JDBC drivers are written in Java for platform independence but are specific to each database.

The collection of Java classes, runtime, compiler, debugger, and usually source code for a version of Java that makes up a Java development environment. JDKs are designated by versions, and Java 2 is used to designate versions from 1.2 onward.

A programming interface from Sun for connecting Java programs to naming and directory services such as DNS, LDAP, and NDS. Oracle XML DB Resource API for Java/JNDI supports JNDI.

The collection of complied classes that make up the Java virtual machine on a platform. JREs are designated by versions, and Java 2 is used to designate versions from 1.2 onward.

An extension to the servlet functionality that enables a simple programmatic interface to Web pages. JSPs are HTML pages with special tags and embedded Java code that is executed on the Web server or application server providing dynamic functionality to HTML pages. JSPs are actually compiled into servlets when first requested and run in the JVM of the server.

A recommendation of the Java Community Process organization (JCP), such as JAXB.

The Java interpreter that converts the compiled Java bytecode into the machine language of the platform and runs it. JVMs can run on a client, in a browser, in a middle tier, on an intranet, on an application server, or in a database server.

See Java Architecture for XML Binding.

See Java API for XML Processing.

See Java Database Connectivity.

Oracle Java IDE that enables application, applet, and servlet development and includes an editor, compiler, debugger, syntax checker, help system, an integrated UML class modeler, and so on. JDeveloper has been enhanced to support XML-based development by including the Oracle XDK Java components, integrated for easy use along with XML support, in its editor.

See Java Developer's Kit.

See Java Naming and Directory Interface

See Oracle9i JVM. The Java Virtual Machine that runs within the memory space of the Oracle database.

See Java Specification Request

See Java virtual machine.

The class of SQL data type that is further divided into Internal LOBs and External LOBs. Internal LOBs include BLOBs, CLOBs, and NCLOBs while External LOBs include BFILEs. See also BFILEs, binary large object, character large object, national charcater large object.

A mechanism used by Oracle XML DB to only convert the XML data for Java when the Java application first asks for it. This saves typical type conversion bottlenecks with JDBC.

A separate application process that monitors the input process.

See large object.

Oracle XML DB provides for name-level locking rather than collection-level locking. When a name is added to a collection, an exclusive write lock is not placed on the collection, only that name within the collection is locked. The name modification is put on a queue, and the collection is locked and modified only at commit time.

The term to describe a set of related element names or attributes within an XML document. The namespace syntax and its usage is defined by a W3C Recommendation. For example, the <xsl:apply-templates/ > element is identified as part of the XSL namespace. Namespaces are declared in the XML document or DTD before they are used, with the following attribute syntax: xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl".

The LOB datatype whose value is composed of character data corresponding to the database national character set.

See national character large object.

In XML, the term used to denote each addressable entity in the DOM tree.

In XML, the declaration of a content type that is not part of those understood by the parser. These types include audio, video, and other multimedia.

The designation for a computer communication network architecture that consists of one or more tiers made up of clients and servers. Typically two-tier systems are made up of one client level and one server level. A three-tier system utilizes two server tiers, typically a database server as one and a Web or application server along with a client tier.

Open Applications Group.

See Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information.

Software that manages message communication between requesting programs on clients and between objects on servers. ORBs pass the action request and its parameters to the object and return the results back. Common implementations are JCORB and EJBs. See also CORBA.

See Ordered Collection in Tables.

Oracle Containers for J2EE, a J2EE deployment tool that comes with JDeveloper.

The Oracle Application Server product integrates all the core services and features required for building, deploying, and managing high-performance, n-tier, transaction-oriented Web applications within an open standards framework.

The operating system environmental variable that identifies the location of the Oracle database installation for use by applications.

The Oracle file system and Java-based development environment that either runs inside the database or on a middle tier and provides a means of creating, storing, and managing multiple types of documents in a single database repository. Formerly known as Oracle Internet File System.

When elements of a VARRAY are stored in a separate table, they are referred to as an Ordered Collection in Tables.

An Oracle tool that provides full-text indexing of documents and the capability to do SQL queries over documents, along with XPath-like searching.

A high-performance XML storage and retrieval technology provided with Oracle database server. It is based on the W3C XML data model.

The Java Virtual Machine that runs within the memory space of the Oracle database. Formerly JServer.

See Object Request Broker.

An organization of members chartered with promoting public information standards through conferences, seminars, exhibits, and other educational events. XML is a standard that OASIS is actively promoting as it is doing with SGML.

An element that surrounds another element, which is referred to as its child element. For example, <Parent><Child></Child></Parent> illustrates a parent element wrapping its child element.

In XML, a software program that accepts as input an XML document and determines whether it is well-formed and, optionally, valid. The Oracle XML Parser supports both SAX and DOM interfaces.

The element content consisting of text that should be parsed but is not part of a tag or nonparsed data.

The name of a resource that reflects its location in the repository hierarchy. A path name is composed of a root element (the first /), element separators (/) and various sub-elements (or path elements). A path element may be composed of any character in the database character set except ("\", "/" ). These characters have a special meaning for Oracle XML DB. Forward slash is the default name separator in a path name and backward slash may be used to escape characters.

See Parsed Character Data.

Personal Digital Assistant, such as a Palm Pilot.

W3C recommendation that enables you to describe the processing relations between XML resources.

The Oracle procedural database language that extends SQL. It is used to create programs that can be run within the database.

An entity that may be granted access control privileges to an Oracle XML DB resource. Oracle XML DB supports as principals:

• Database users.

• Database roles. A database role can be understood as a group, for example, the DBA role represents the DBA group of all the users granted the DBA role.

Users and roles imported from an LDAP server are also supported as a part of the database general authentication model.

The opening part of an XML document containing the XML declaration and any DTD or other declarations needed to process the document.

The term used to specify the location on the Internet of the reference that follows.

Resource Definition Framework.

A software processor that produces a document in a specified format.

The set of database objects, in any schema, that are mapped to path names. There is one root to the repository ("/") which contains a set of resources, each with a path name.

An object in the repository hierarchy.

The name of a resource within its parent folder. Resource names must be unique (potentially subject to case-insensitivity) within a folder. Resource names are always in the UTF-8 character set (NVARCHAR2).

The output of a SQL query consisting of one or more rows of data.

The element that encloses all the other elements in an XML document and is between the optional prolog and epilog. An XML document is only permitted to have one root element.

See Simple API for XML.

The definition of the structure and data types within a database. It can also be used to refer to an XML document that support the XML Schema W3C recommendation.

The process used to modify XML schemas that are registered with Oracle XML DB. Oracle XML DB provides the PL/SQL procedure DBMS_XMLSCHEMA.CopyEvolve(). This copies existing XML instance documents to temporary tables, drops and re-registers the XML schema with Oracle XML DB, and copies the XML instance documents to the new XMLType tables.

The primary security protocol on the Internet; it utilizes a public key /private key form of encryption between browsers and servers.

The HTML command used to place data or other content into a Web page before sending it to the requesting browser.

A Java application that runs in a server, typically a Web or application server, and performs processing on that server. Servlets are the Java equivalent to CGI scripts.

The active connection between two tiers.

See Structured Generalized Markup Language.

An XML standard interface provided by XML parsers and used by event-based applications.

An XML-based protocol for exchanging information in a decentralized, distributed environment.

See Simple Object Access Protocol.

See Structured Query Language.

An ANSI specification for representing XML in SQL. Oracle SQL includes SQL/XML functions that query XML. The specification is not yet completed.

See Server-side Include.

See Secure Sockets Layer.

An ISO standard for defining the format of a text document implemented using markup and DTDs.

The standard language used to access and process data in a relational database.

In XML, the term used to describe an XML document that consists of XSL processing instructions used by an XSL processor to transform or format an input XML document into an output one.

Specifies the location on the host operating system of the reference that follows.

The native SQL function that returns as a single XML document the results of a passed-in SYS_XMLGEN SQL query. This can also be used to instantiate an XMLType.

The native SQL function that returns as an XML document the results of a passed-in SQL query. This can also be used to instantiate an XMLType.

A single piece of XML markup that delimits the start or end of an element. Tags start with < and end with >. In XML, there are start-tags (<name>), end-tags (</name>), and empty tags (<name/>).

TransX Utility is a Java API that simplifies the loading of translated seed data and messages into a database.

See Universal Description, Discovery and Integration.

See User Interface XML.

The address syntax that is used to create URLs and XPaths.

The address that defines the location and route to a file on the Internet. URLs are used by browsers to navigate the World Wide Web and consist of a protocol prefix, port number, domain name, directory and subdirectory names, and the file name. For example http://otn.oracle.com:80/tech/xml/index.htm specifies the location and path a browser will travel to find the OTN XML site on the World Wide Web.

This specification provides a platform-independent framework using XML to describe services, discover businesses, and integrate business services on the Internet.

See Uniform Resource Identifier.

See Uniform Resource Locator.

A set of technologies that constitute a framework for building web applications.

The term used to refer to an XML document when its structure and element content is consistent with that declared in its referenced or included DTD.

See World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

See World Wide Web distributed authoring and versioning.

The cartridge within OAS that processes URLs and sends them to the appropriate cartridge.

A general purpose XML language for describing the interface, protocol bindings, and deployment details of Web services.

The term used to refer to an XML document that conforms to the syntax of the XML version declared in its XML declaration. This includes having a single root element, properly nested tags, and so forth.

The committee within the W3C that is made up of industry members that implement the recommendation process in specific Internet technology areas.

An international industry consortium started in 1994 to develop standards for the World Wide Web. It is located at http://www.w3c.org.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard for collaborative authoring on the Web. Oracle XML DB Foldering and Security features are WebDAV-compliant.

The term describing a data structure or software that wraps around other data or software, typically to provide a generic or object interface.

See Web Services Description Language.

A worldwide hypertext system that uses the Internet and the HTTP protocol.

An XML element defined by the Oracle XML DB schema that contains binary data. XDBbinary elements are stored in the repository when completely unstructured binary data is uploaded into Oracle XML DB.

See XML Developer's Kit.

The XML Linking language consisting of the rules governing the use of hyperlinks in XML documents. These rules are being developed by the XML Linking Group under the W3C recommendation process. This is one of the three languages XML supports to manage document presentation and hyperlinks (XLink, XPointer, and XPath).

See eXtensible Markup Language.

A W3C recommendation that describes the use of the xml:base attribute, which can be inserted in an XML document to specify a base URI other than the base URI of the document or external entity. The URIs in the document are resolved by means of the given base.

The set of libraries, components, and utilities that provide software developers with the standards-based functionality to XML-enable their applications. In the case of the Oracle Java components of XDK, the kit contains an XML parser, an XSLT processor, the XML Class Generator, the JavaBeans, and the XSQL Servlet.

A set of services that allows for easy integration with the Oracle E-Business Suite to create and consume XML messages triggered by business events.

The on-going effort of the W3C to create a standard for the language and syntax to query XML documents.

W3C is creating a standard to enable the use of simple data types and complex structures within an XML document. It addresses areas currently lacking in DTDs, including the definition and validation of data types. Oracle XML Schema Processor automatically ensures validity of XML documents and data used in e-business applications, including online exchanges. It adds simple and complex datatypes to XML documents and replaces DTD functionality with an XML Schema definition XML document.

Allows Oracle XML DB protocol servers to recognize that an XML document inserted into Oracle XML DB repository is an instance of a registered XML schema. This means that the content of the instance document is automatically stored in the default table defined by that XML schema. Defined by the W3C XML Schema working group and based on adding attributes that identify the target XML schema to the root element of the instance document. These attributes are defined by the XMLSchema-instance namespace.

Used to identify an instance document as a member of the class defined by a particular XML schema. You must declare the XMLSchema-instance namespace by adding a namespace declaration to the root element of the instance document. For example: xmlns:xsi=http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance.

When using Oracle XML DB, you must first register your XML schema. You can then use the XML schema URLs while creating XMLType tables, columns, and views.

This Oracle utility can generate an XML document (string or DOM) given a SQL query or a JDBC ResultSet object. It can also extract the data from an XML document, then insert the data into a DB table, update a DB table, or delete corresponding data from a DB table.

XMLType is an Oracle datatype that stores XML data using an underlying CLOB column or object-relational columns within a table or view.

Oracle XML DB provides a way to wrap existing relational and object-relational data in XML format. This is especially useful if, for example, your legacy data is not in XML but you have to migrate it to an XML format.

The open standard syntax for addressing elements within a document used by XSL and XPointer. XPath is currently a W3C recommendation. It specifies the data model and grammar for navigating an XML document utilized by XSLT, XLink and XML Query.

Can be used when the XMLType is stored in structured storage (object-relational) using an XML schema. Queries using XPath can potentially be rewritten directly to underlying object-relational columns. XPath query rewrite is used for XPaths in SQL functions such as existsNode(), extract(), extractValue(), and updateXML(). It enables the XPath to be evaluated against the XML document without constructing the XML document in memory.

The term and W3C recommendation to describe a reference to an XML document fragment. An XPointer can be used at the end of an XPath-formatted URI. It specifies the identification of individual entities or fragments within an XML document using XPath navigation.

See eXtensible Stylesheet Language.

See eXtensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Object.

See eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation.

Oracle's XSLT Virtual Machine is the software implementation of a "CPU" designed to run compiled XSLT code. The concept of virtual machine assumes a compiler compiling XSLT stylesheets to a program of byte-codes, or machine instructions for the "XSLT CPU".

The designation used by the Oracle Servlet providing the ability to produce dynamic XML documents from one or more SQL queries and optionally transform the document in the server using an XSL stylesheet.

See XML SQL Utility.