Glossary
Chapter 1
A Microsoft data-access programming interface technology shipped as part of the Microsoft .NET base class libraries. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADO.NET for more details.
Pronounced “cee sharp,” C# is a managed programming language released as part of Microsoft’s .NET Framework. C# is an object-oriented language and draws inspiration from C++, Delphi, and Java. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language) for more details.
Can be thought of as a typed-safe reference to a method. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegate_(.NET) for more details.
Domain Specific Language (DSL)
A domain-specific language is a programming language specific to an individual problem domain. Conversely, C# and VB.NET are general programming languages that can solve a range of programming tasks. Usually DSLs focus specifically on a single technique or, in this particular usage, a particular data query language. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language for more details.
A managed runtime environment for Windows (Linux flavors via the Mono framework). Consists of a runtime environment for executing applications, a set of programming languages to write those applications, and a set of base-class libraries. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework for more details.
Commonly just referred to as SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database system product by Microsoft. It is programmed in its own query language called Transact Structured Query Language (T-SQL). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SQL_Server for more details.
Microsoft SQL Server’s built-in query language based on ANSI SQL. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transact-SQL for more details.
Often referred to as VB.NET, Visual Basic.NET is an object-oriented managed language for the Microsoft .NET Framework. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VB.Net for more information.
XML Path Language is a specific domain language for selecting and navigating segments of an XML document. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath for more details.
XQuery is a language designed for querying XML-based data. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQuery for more details.
Chapter 2
Visual Studio has a set of features that show dynamic help tips as you type code. These tips take many forms based on the code you are editing at that time. One example is that after typing the name of an instance variable followed by a period character (.), Visual Studio will pop up a small tip balloon showing what fields, properties, or method are available on the object being typed at that time.
Chapter 4
Database Management System (DBMS)
A database management system is a (set) of software program(s) that allow the storage and retrieval of data. Although it is not a strict requirement, most DBMS systems nowadays are relational in storage structure. Some common examples of DBMSs are Microsoft’s SQL Server, Sun’s MySQL, and Oracle’s self-named product. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dbms for more information.
When referring to database design, normalization aims to minimize duplicated data by spreading it across a higher number of database tables and creating relationships (accessed by joins) between these tables. Structuring a database in this way decreases inconsistencies and safeguards against some structural and logical errors. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization for more information.
An inner join is a join between two tables in which each table has a matching record based on a specified key value. Any record that doesn’t have a matching key value as specified by the join will be omitted from the result. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_join#Inner_join for more information.
An outer join is a join between two tables in which it is not necessary that each table have a matching record based on a specific key value. More commonly, one side (left or right) is allowed to have a nonmatching record (null for instance), and this record will still be returned. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_join#Outer_joins for more information.
Chapter 8
COM is a binary, language neutral, interprocess communication interface standard that allows software components to communicate with each other. Many of Microsoft’s software components expose a COM interface to allow other software programs to automate that software’s usage (Microsoft Excel, for instance). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model for more details.
COM-Interop is the general name of the technology that allows .NET CLR programs to talk to COM interfaces and vice versa. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_Interop for more details.