A standard being developed to interconnect applications and databases. The standard originally attempted to cover any kind of data access and concerned itself only with effective dialogue management, but the complexity of so broad a scope has focused it more on Structured Query Language (SQL). An SQL specialization draft based on SQL2 is being developed as the first potential implementation of RDA.

A database system in which the database is organized and accessed according to the relationships between data items without the need for any consideration of physical orientation and relationship. Relationships between data items are expressed by means of tables.

A remotely accessible program that lets you do keyword searches for information on the Internet. The search engine is a server program and should not be confused with the browser or other programs that run on your desktop PC. There are a number of search utilities for the WWW (Yahoo, Lycos, etc.). The other Internet services typically have one search tool: ( FTP--Archie, Gopher--Veronica,...)There are several types of search engine; the search may cover titles of documents, URLs, headers, or the full text.

Two protocols that allow dial-up access to the Internet through a serial link. Most Internet access packages support both, through you can use only one at a time.

A protocol that describes how information is passed between reporting devices and data collection programs. It can be used to gather information about hosts on the Internet.

SQL is a relational data language that provides a consistent, English keyword-oriented set of facilities for query, data definition, data manipulation and data control. It is a programming interface to a relational database management system (RDBMS).