Glossary of technical terms

    A
  • API
    An Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of functions made available to interact and integrate with a software application or system.
    • B
  • Batch Size
    Represents the quantity of data read, transformed and loaded into the destination at the same time.
    • C
  • Connection string
    A sequence of characters that specifies information about a data source and the means of connecting to it.
  • Connection timeout
    When a server is taking too long to reply to a data request made from another device.
  • Cube
    A multidimensional structure containing aggregated and calculated data that can be viewed in different ways (through dimension slices), for insight into the data collected.
    • D
  • Dimension
    An angle through which the Measures will be analyzed.
    • E
  • ETL
    ETL or Extract, Transform and Load are processes with which you can perform tasks from databases. Extract (or read in other words) consists of collecting data from one to different types of sources. Transform consists of converting that extracted data into the necessary format through the use of tables in order to be processed in the data warehouse. Load (or store in other words) consists of writing the converted data into the destination database.
    • M
  • Measure
    A numeric type field whose values can be measured. Some examples of Measures include: Sales Total, Costs, Margins and Quantities.
    • S
  • Slice
    A subsection of data within the Cube, defined by a set of Dimension Elements.
    • T
  • Tracking key
    Helps identify the field used in the incremental load.
    • U
  • URI
    The Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string (sequence) of characters that unambiguously identifies a particular resource.
    • V
  • View
    Presents data in different formats that are easy to read, such as Worksheets and many types of Graphs.