This glossary is still very thinly populated, and not all references in the main text have been properly linked and coordinated with this glossary. This will hopefully change in future revisions.

Attribute

A property of objects stored in a database table. Attributes are represented as columns (or fields) in a table.

Active database
Connection
Column
Data Definition Language (DDL)

The subset of SQL used for defining and examining the structure of a database.

Data Manipulation Language (DML)

The subset of SQL used for inserting, deleting, updating and fetching data in a database.

database
Database Object

An object of type `database`.

Field
Field Types Specifier

A value that specifies the type of each field in a query.

Foreign Function Interface (FFI)

An interface from Common Lisp to a external library which contains compiled functions written in other programming languages, typically C.

Query

An SQL statement which returns a set of results.

RDBMS

A Relational DataBase Management System (RDBMS) is a software package for managing a database in which the data is defined, organised and accessed as rows and columns of a table.

Record

A sequence of attribute values stored in a database table.

Row
Structured Query Language (SQL)

An ANSI standard language for storing and retrieving data in a relational database.

SQL Expression

Either a string containing a valid SQL statement, or an object of type `sql-expression`.

Table

A collection of data which is defined, stored and accessed as tuples of attribute values (i.e., rows and columns).

Transaction

An atomic unit of one or more SQL statements of which all or none are successfully executed.

Tuple
View

A table display whose structure and content are derived from an existing table via a query.

View Class

The class `standard-db-object` or one of its subclasses.