B
EILMOSUVWBAM
Business Activity Monitoring provides organizations direct access to the most recent data (on processes) within the company. It is characterized by its real time character, which sets it apart from other enterpise software. Consequently, essential information is available online on relevant developments in the market, scientific discoveries, competition, politics and stock data. Other characteristics are diversity of involved sources, powerful analysis and modelling functionality and the delivery of concrete suggestions for rapid decision making.
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Basel 2
Basel 2 is a collection of international agreements to prevent banks from going bankrupt. Basel 2 sets high demands on the collection of data on transactions of a bank.
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ebXML
Electronic Business XML messaging services. ebXML is an open standaard for business specifications that makes it possible to use XML in such a consistent manner that it can be used to exchange all kinds of electronic business data. ebXML uses SOAP as messaging protocol, has its own Business Process Specification Schemas for the definition of the coherence of business processes and has in its core components an elegant generic model to lay down the structure of the messages themselves. Form, structure, contents and packaging are bundled this way.
The standard ebXML has been created by the EDI-community in an effort to reduce the EDI costs by using the Internet instead of expensive VANs. It is an international intiative, developed under supervision of UN/CEFACT (United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation) and OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). According to www.ebxml.org, the primary goal of ebXML is lowering the threshold for doing electronic business in order to stimulate trading, in particular smaller companies and development countries.
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ENUM (RFC 2916)
ENUM can concisely be summarized as "a trick to put telephone numbers in DNS". ENUM designates an internet protocol (RFC 2916) which describes how to derive a unique internet domain name from each telephone number. This domain name points to a database which contains all numbers and addresses (the contact details), that have been given by somebody who has registered, such as mail addresses, a fax number, a personal website and a VoIP-number. Together these data constitute the "NAPTR-records".
The trick of ENUM, the conversion of a telephone number to a domain name, is as follows: take a telephone number with in front of it the country code, for example +31 23 5463413, reverse the number (31436453213), put dots between the digits: 3.1.4.3.6.4.5.3.2.1.3 and finally append after the number that has specifically been created for ENUM .e164.arpa: 2.7.3.1.4.3.6.4.5.3.2.1.3.e164.arpa.
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IBM zSeries, pSeries, iSeries and xSeries
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IFRS
The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) defines uniformity and clarity for financial reporting to the outside world. Its rules are used to draw up annual accounts.
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ISP
Internet Service Provider, a company providing Internet access to customers.
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LAMP
Combination of Linux operating system, webserver software Apache, database MySQL and scripting languages PHP, Perl or Python.
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LINQ
Language INtegrated Query. For a language that supports LINQ, the database language has become part of the programming language. Constructs to query and modify data are as equal a part of the language as 'if-then-else' statements, loops and class declarations. An API is no longer needed. The data types correspond en dealing with sets has been added to the programming language.
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Master data
Referencedata for which agreements have been made on the way in which they are stored and presented, and which are subsequently shared by various applications within a company.
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Master data management
The set of procedures to establish and maintain the master data. Now the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. The purpose is to agree upon all different records of customers, products, suppliers etc. in one single main file, from where all customers and application must work.
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Mesh-networks
The traditional way of broadcasting wireless signals via access points will be replaced by mesh-networks in the near future. A receiver acts as a sender too and distributes the signal over longer distances this way. This means that a company network needs only one access point and that the network is maintained by the clients themselves. If a client drops out, a new route is calculated automatically. Cables are no longer needed and products are plug-and-play. This technique is currently being employed in the Netherlands and abroad, among others by Hopling. However, there is no international standard yet, hence mesh-networks are proprietary and incompatibel with solutions of other suppliers. This standard is currently being developed as 802.11s.
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ODF
ODF is a document file format for electronisc documents such as
word processing documents, spreadsheets, graphs and charts,
presentations and everything else you normally create in an
office suite. It started out as the original file format of the
freely available office suite
OpenOffice.org and was founded
by a technical committee by the consortium 'Organization
for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards' also
known as OASIS. OpenDocument is an ISO- and IEC-international
standard since 2006: ISO/IEC 26300:2006.
Since the specification is freely available, OpenDocument satisfies
the current definition of an "open standard".
The basis of ODF is XML and an ODF file may be such an XML document,
but also a collection documents contained in a zip file. ODF
comprises the following file types:
.odt: ODF text - word processing document.ods: ODF spreadsheet - spreadsheet document.odp: ODF presentations.odg: ODF graphics - graphical document.odf: ODF formules - mathematical equationsAdvantages:
Drawbacks:
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OpenXML
Microsoft defined OpenXML based on the XML-fileformat designed for Office 2003, hence OpenXML is backwards compatibel with it. Since Microsoft argues that ODF does not sufficiently feature specifications and definitions to support Microsoft Office, it couldn't and wouldn't endorse ODF as standard for Office. As a consequence Microsoft felt oblidged to develop its own standard which does support all required functionality. This standard became OpenXML which Office 2007 uses as its own fileformat. In essence OpenXML is a zipfile too containing XML and other document types. Even older binairy Microsoft Office files may be contained in such an OpenXML-container, which caused quiet some criticism, since openess and portability are obviously no longer guaranteed when closed fileformats may be included in an OpenXML document. OpenXML distinguishes the following main filetypes:
.docx - OpenXML document (Word).xlsx - OpenXML spreadsheet (Excel).pptx - OpenXML presentation (Powerpoint)Advantages:
Drawbacks:
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SaaS
Software as a Service is the follow-up of the Application Service Provisioning (ASP)-model. ASP wasn't successful since the majority of providers came from the ISP market, which merely posessed knowsledge on hosting. SaaS does flourish since providers are aquainted with the way companies are organized and do business.
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SOA
SOA is an abbreviation for service oriented architecture. It is an architecture that integrates applications which have been developed for heterogenous platforms and in different languages. This is established with metadata. The result is that within a network independent services become available to end-users or that they form a basis for new composite services, which in turn do not require any knowledge of the underlying application. In addition, existing legacy systems may be modified without disrupting any higher level services and/or processes. The development of a SOA often involves certain webservice protocols and standards. Among these are XML (a language/format to describe data), HTTP (a communication protocol between clients and servers), HTTPS (secured HTTP), SOAP (a protocol based on HTTP meant to exchange XML), WSDL (an XML based language/format to describe services) and UDDI (an XML based registry to publish WSDL and in this way to announce it to other services). Independent Software Vendors such as TIBCO also employ EAI (enterprise application integration) techniques such as rendez-vous or EJB (enterprise Java Beans).
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UWB
Ulta wideband: An UWB-signal consists of an irregular series of ultra short electrical pulses. No carrier is used. This anomalous behaviour offers many advantages as compared to other radio technologies. First UWB-signals are transmitted very efficiently, since in principle every pluse represents one bit only. Information is transmitted by variation of the moment (within a certain pulse-timepattern) a pulse is sent, or by modification of the phase of a pulse (first negative, then positive, or just the other way around). Modulation is therefore simpler as compared to conventional radio technologies, where the carrier of a certain frequency is generated first. Sending signals via such a carrier implies either modifying the amplitude or the frequency. The former of modulation is called amplitude modulation (AM), the latter is called frequency modulation (FM). Since a carrier has to be generated first, conventional radio technologies require more power, since a carrier is continously operational. Conventional radio is continuously broadcasting electromagnetic radiation, regardless whether information is sent.
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Virtualization
The concept of virtualization originates from the mainframe operating system that is currently called z/VM. The most important feature, hence the name, consisted of the option to run multiple virtual systems. To this extent is used a virtual memory system. In these days, IBM sold OS/360 on its mainframes, and used z/VM internally to test new versions of its hardware and software. Instigated by a huge demand from the market, the company eventually started offering it, under the name VM/370.
Virtual machines are conceptually rather straightforward. The operating system enables the definition of multiple virtual machines. Within these machines images of complete operating systems may be executed (hosting). Via the hypervisor or so-called VMM (virtual machine monitor), these virtual systems are assigned their hardware capacities and are being managed. If desirable, it is possible again to define new hosts within these virtual systems.
An overview of virtualization can be found on IBM DeveloperWorks.
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Web 2.0
McKinsey and Forrester draw a similar perimeter when defining Web 2.0 services:
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Win4Lin
Win4Lin is not a comprehensive hardware emulator, but mediates between runtimes and emulators. Merely the execution of a Windows installation under Linux is supported. The filesystem is the same as the underlying Linux operating system too. The desktop version can be employed, whereas Wine and Crossover Office fail. In addition, Win4Lin also supplies a Terminal server, which levels this product with Citrix. In fact this is the same system as the desktop version, but the Windows interface is transferred to the X-terminals via the network. The most important reason to employ such a solution are the advantages of a centralized management.
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WiMAX
WiMAX is an abbreviation for World-wide Interoperability for Microwave Access.
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Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator)
Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) makes it possible to run Windows applications on PC Unix. The most important part of the software consists of a series of APIs (application programming interface) that offer Windows functionality for the Unix platform. An important advantage is that no separate Windows installation (and hence license) is required. Wine is released under the OS license (Open Source) LGPL (Lesser General Public License) and works well under Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Support for the Mac OS X has become available as a beta version via CodeWeavers.
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WSS
In a Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) light from incoming optic fiber connections passes through a lens on a lattice which separates the colours and sends it on to a chip in which a huge number of microscopic moveable mirrors have been etched. By rotating the small mirrors the chip can determine which colour channels are mirrored to the outgoing optic fiber. As opposed to a traditional router which has to inspect the address of every single package (after it has been converted to electricity), a WSS relays a whole colour to a certain outlet.
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WUS
Webservices with UDDI and SOAP.
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