Definition of IT industry standard terms and their definitions.

Application Integration

The sharing of processes and/or data with different application systems within an organization using real-time communication. It is typically implemented to increase application efficiency and improve scalability between systems.

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The combination of business and technical processes that are used to merge data from multiple disparate sources into standard architectures for the purpose of gaining meaningful insights.

Data Mapping

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Data mapping is a linking process that creates data element mappings between two different data models for the purposes of integration. It is generally used as an initial step for a wide array of data integration tasks, including data transformation between a data source and a destination.

Data Mart

A data repository that contains data arranged in specific patterns (star schema, snowflake schema, etc) to support informational applications.

Data Quality

Refers to the overall level of “quality” or perceived value of the data. If a particular datastore is seen as holding highly relevant data for a project, that data is seen as a quality to the users when their is a high degree of trust in the data values.

Data Virtualization

A Data Integration approach that allows applications to retrieve and manipulate data without requiring technical details about the data. Virtualization is seen as an alternative to the traditional ETL process.

Data Warehouse

This is conceived as a central location of integrated data from other more disparate sources, storing both current (real-time) and historical data which can then be used to create trends reports. They are generally used for analytics in an information system.

Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)

The ETL process refers to the three main tasks performed in a data integration/migration process. Each of the tiers (Extract, Transform or Load) can include multiple levels.

Master Data Management

An industry-standard term that incorporates processes, policies, standards, tools, and governance to define and manage all of an enterprise’s most critical information in order to articulate a single point of reference.

Scalability

The ability to increase and upscale key system services; inbound and outbound volumes of data, accessibility of processes and services, and the number of users accessing data critical to the enterprise.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

A software client delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted and typically accessed by end-users using a client (ie. web browser, mobile device, etc).