Glossary

An older list of general IT terms, kept here unchanged. It has no sources and is not reviewed; the terms above are the ones the portal uses.

A/B Testing

A method of comparing two versions of a feature or page to determine which performs better based on user metrics.

API

Application Programming Interface. A set of rules and protocols that allows software applications to communicate with each other.

API Gateway

A server that acts as a single entry point for a set of microservices, handling request routing, composition, and protocol translation.

Artifact

A deployable component produced during the software build process, such as a compiled binary, Docker image, or package.

Auto-scaling

The ability of a cloud infrastructure to automatically adjust compute resources based on current demand.

BigQuery

Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless data warehouse designed for large-scale data analytics using SQL.

Blue-Green Deployment

A release strategy that runs two identical production environments to enable zero-downtime deployments and easy rollbacks.

Broker

A middleware component that routes messages between producers and consumers in distributed messaging systems like Kafka or RabbitMQ.

Brownfield

A software project that involves developing or modifying an existing system, as opposed to building from scratch.

CI/CD

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment. A set of practices that automate building, testing, and deploying code changes.

CORS

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. A browser security mechanism that controls how web pages can request resources from a different domain.

CQRS

Command Query Responsibility Segregation. An architecture pattern that separates read and write operations into different models.

Container

A lightweight, standalone, executable software package that includes everything needed to run an application: code, runtime, and dependencies.

DAG

Directed Acyclic Graph. A data structure used in tools like Apache Airflow to define task dependencies and execution order in data pipelines.

DNS

Domain Name System. The internet's phonebook that translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses.

Docker

An open-source platform that automates the deployment of applications inside lightweight, portable containers.

Data Lake

A centralized repository that stores large volumes of raw data in its native format until needed for analysis.

Data Mesh

A decentralized data architecture that treats data as a product, with domain teams owning and serving their own data.

ETL

Extract, Transform, Load. A data integration process that extracts data from sources, transforms it into a usable format, and loads it into a target system.

Edge Computing

A distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of data to reduce latency.

Elasticsearch

A distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene, commonly used for log analytics and full-text search.

Event-Driven Architecture

A software design pattern where the flow of the program is determined by events such as user actions, sensor outputs, or messages.

Firewall

A network security system that monitors and controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined rules.

Feature Flag

A software development technique that enables or disables features at runtime without deploying new code.

FQDN

Fully Qualified Domain Name. The complete domain name for a specific computer or host on the internet.

Git

A distributed version control system for tracking changes in source code during software development.

GraphQL

A query language for APIs that allows clients to request exactly the data they need, reducing over-fetching and under-fetching.

gRPC

A high-performance RPC framework developed by Google that uses Protocol Buffers and HTTP/2 for efficient service-to-service communication.

Helm

A package manager for Kubernetes that simplifies the deployment and management of applications using reusable chart templates.

Horizontal Scaling

Adding more machines or instances to a system to handle increased load, as opposed to upgrading a single machine.

Hot Reload

A development feature that applies code changes to a running application without requiring a full restart.

IaC

Infrastructure as Code. The practice of managing and provisioning infrastructure through machine-readable configuration files instead of manual processes.

Idempotent

An operation that produces the same result regardless of how many times it is executed, critical for reliable distributed systems.

Ingress

A Kubernetes API object that manages external access to services in a cluster, typically HTTP/HTTPS routing.

JWT

JSON Web Token. A compact, URL-safe token format used for securely transmitting claims between parties, commonly used in authentication.

Job Queue

A data structure that holds tasks to be processed asynchronously by worker processes, enabling background job execution.

Kubernetes

An open-source container orchestration platform that automates deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Kafka

Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform used for building real-time data pipelines and streaming applications.

KPI

Key Performance Indicator. A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company or system is achieving key objectives.

Lambda

AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that runs code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers.

Load Balancer

A device or service that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure reliability and performance.

Latency

The time delay between a request being made and the response being received, often measured in milliseconds.

MCP

Model Context Protocol. An open protocol that standardizes how AI applications connect to external tools, data sources, and services.

Microservices

An architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled, independently deployable services.

Middleware

Software that sits between an operating system and applications, providing common services like authentication, logging, and message routing.

NIS2

The EU Network and Information Security Directive 2. An updated cybersecurity regulation requiring organizations to implement stricter security measures.

Namespace

A logical partition used to organize and isolate resources within a system, commonly used in Kubernetes and programming languages.

NoSQL

A class of database management systems that do not follow the traditional relational model, optimized for specific data models like documents or key-value pairs.

OAuth

An open authorization framework that allows third-party applications to access user resources without exposing credentials.

Observability

The ability to understand the internal state of a system by examining its outputs, typically through logs, metrics, and traces.

ORM

Object-Relational Mapping. A technique that lets developers interact with a database using objects in their programming language instead of raw SQL.

Pipeline

A set of automated processes that move code from version control through build, test, and deployment stages.

Pub/Sub

Publish/Subscribe messaging pattern where senders broadcast messages to a topic and receivers subscribe to topics of interest.

Prometheus

An open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability, commonly paired with Grafana for visualization.

Queue

A data structure or messaging system that stores messages in order for asynchronous processing, ensuring reliable delivery between services.

Query Optimization

The process of improving the performance of database queries by analyzing execution plans, indexes, and data access patterns.

RAG

Retrieval-Augmented Generation. An AI technique that enhances LLM responses by retrieving relevant external documents before generating answers.

RBAC

Role-Based Access Control. A method of restricting system access based on the roles assigned to individual users within an organization.

REST

Representational State Transfer. An architectural style for building web APIs that uses standard HTTP methods and stateless communication.

Reverse Proxy

A server that sits in front of web servers and forwards client requests, providing load balancing, SSL termination, and caching.

SRE

Site Reliability Engineering. A discipline that applies software engineering practices to infrastructure and operations to create scalable, reliable systems.

SSL/TLS

Secure Sockets Layer / Transport Layer Security. Cryptographic protocols that provide encrypted communication between clients and servers.

Serverless

A cloud execution model where the cloud provider manages the infrastructure, automatically scaling and billing based on actual usage.

Service Mesh

A dedicated infrastructure layer that manages service-to-service communication within a microservices architecture using sidecar proxies.

Terraform

An open-source IaC tool by HashiCorp that enables you to define and provision infrastructure across multiple cloud providers using declarative configuration.

Throughput

The amount of data or number of operations a system can process in a given time period, a key performance metric.

Token

A unit of text processed by an AI model, or a piece of data used for authentication. Context depends on usage: NLP or security.

UUID

Universally Unique Identifier. A 128-bit identifier used to uniquely identify resources across distributed systems without coordination.

Uptime

The percentage of time a system or service is operational and accessible, commonly expressed as nines (e.g. 99.99%).

VPN

Virtual Private Network. A technology that creates a secure, encrypted connection över a public network, often used for remote access to private infrastructure.

Vertical Scaling

Increasing the capacity of a single machine by adding more CPU, memory, or storage, as opposed to adding more machines.

Vector Database

A specialized database designed to store and query high-dimensional vectors, commonly used for AI embeddings and semantic search.

Webhook

A mechanism that allows an application to send real-time HTTP callbacks to a specified URL when a particular event occurs.

WebSocket

A communication protocol that provides full-duplex communication channels över a single TCP connection for real-time data transfer.

WAF

Web Application Firewall. A security layer that monitors and filters HTTP traffic between a web application and the internet.

XSS

Cross-Site Scripting. A security vulnerability where attackers inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users.

XML

Extensible Markup Language. A markup language that defines rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.

YAML

YAML Ain't Markup Language. A human-readable data serialization format commonly used for configuration files in DevOps and cloud-native tools.

Yarn

A fast, reliable JavaScript package manager that serves as an alternative to npm with deterministic dependency resolution.

Zero Trust

A security framework that requires all users and devices to be authenticated and authorized before accessing any resource, regardless of network location.

Zero Downtime Deployment

A deployment strategy that ensures an application remains available to users throughout the entire update process.

Zookeeper

Apache ZooKeeper is a centralized service for maintaining configuration, naming, and synchronization in distributed systems.

Agent

An autonomous AI system that can plan, use tools, and take actions to accomplish complex tasks with minimal human intervention.

Batch Processing

A method of processing large volumes of data in groups at scheduled intervals, as opposed to real-time stream processing.

CDN

Content Delivery Network. A geographically distributed network of servers that delivers web content and media to users from the nearest edge location.

Canary Deployment

A release strategy that gradually rolls out changes to a small subset of users before deploying to the entire production environment.

DDoS

Distributed Denial of Service. A cyberattack that overwhelms a target system with traffic from multiple sources to disrupt normal operation.

Embedding

A numerical vector representation of data (text, images, etc.) that captures semantic meaning, enabling similarity search and AI applications.

Fine-tuning

The process of training a pre-trained AI model on a smaller, domain-specific dataset to adapt it for specialized tasks.

GitOps

A set of practices that uses Git as the single source of truth for declarative infrastructure and application delivery.

Hallucination

When an AI model generates confident but factually incorrect or fabricated information that is not grounded in its training data.

Immutable Infrastructure

An approach where servers are never modified after deployment. Updates are made by replacing instances with new ones built from a common image.