An information structure that defines the organization of a database including the list and description of each element of the database such as columns, data types, memory allocations for data storage, etc…
Data files
Files that contain actual data, rather than meta-data or other data descriptions. See meta-data and data.
Data mart
A departmental or subject-specific subset of data of a data warehouse. See data warehouse.
Data mining
The process of finding patterns or trends in a collection of data.
Data modeling
The development of rules that cover data entities (objects such as relationships, tables, columns, data integrity, etc.) of a database management system.
Data set
A collection of data entries where each entry contains a group of data items. Also called a table.
Data source file
An initialization file that stores the location of data on a server and the transport method used to access the data.
Data source name (DSN)
DSN; in ODBC, the name of the origin (e.g., of a file, database, document, etc.) of transmitted data.
Data type
The characteristic description of data, be it alphabetic, numeric, integer, decimal, character, string, etc.
Data type discrepancy
Condition in which data stored in a particular field does not match the DBMS data type defined for that field.
Data warehouse
A voluminous collection of summarized consistent data, usually historical in nature, used for only data analysis rather than data processing
A database designed and optimized for OLAP.
Data-only option
An option supported by the OmniAccess update routines (oainsert, oadelete, and oaupdate) that disables the real-time updating of OMNIDEX indexes. This option is useful when updating a high volume of records. Data-only updates must be followed by a DBINSTAL B or INDEX operation to update the OMNIDEX indexes.
DataSource
A collection of information used by the ODBC software to connect to a database, required before accessing databases from a container application such as Microsoft Word.
Decompile
in OMNIDEX, the process of reverting a compiled Environment Catalog file to an Environment source file using the utility OADECOMP.
Denormalization
The process of introducing duplication of data within a relational database (which is typically normalized), used in data warehouse applications to avoid the inefficiencies of cross-table join operations. See normalization.
Detail data set
Child table.
Detail Record
A record in a child table. See DR Domain.
DI keys
Distributed Index key. See distributed index.
Dimension table**
A parent table with a unique key that provides keyed access into a child (fact) table;
Tables that contain descriptions for codes in fact tables.
Direct access
The process of locating a record or row based on its location on a storage device, which is fast but requires an exact key match. See hashed access and hashed key.
Disconnect
The process of disconnect from an Omnidex Environment or from a network connection.
Distributed index
An indexing option for Omnidex, or MDK indexes, in which the index is stored as a separate file, essentially creating an IMSAM, or ASK key;
An ASK Index installed through an MDK Index process with ;DI option which can be used essentially as an MDK Index, including on-line index maintenance and optimization like an MDK Index, and also aggregation as on an ASK Index.
Domain
A parent table and any child tables that were linked (prejoined) to it during Omnidex installation;
A single, unjoined table with Omnidex indexes installed on it;
A a single data set installed with multiple keys;
An association of several data sets installed with multiple keys and linked during installation. Also called an Omnidex domain. See SI domain and DR domain.
DR
See Detail Record.
DR domain
An OMNIDEX domain that consists of one detail data set, or child table, that has not been linked to a master data set, or parent table. A DR domain child table can also be part of RS (Record Specific) domain. See Hybrid-DR domain and domain.
Drill down
In data analysis, the process of narrowing data to retrieve specific underlying detail;
In OMNIDEX, successive iterations of adding criteria to a query, refining a search to the exact subset of required data.
Driver Manager
Software written by Microsoft and installed when installing ODBC applications;
Software accessed by container applications such as Excel which initiates the appropriate ODBC driver such as the OMNIDEX ODBC Driver.