Enterprise Software Glossary.

API (Application Programming Interface)

A set of protocols and rules that allows different software applications to communicate and share data with each other seamlessly.

REST API

Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for designing networked applications over HTTP using standard verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE).

GraphQL

GraphQL is an open-source data query and manipulation language for APIs allowing client applications to request exact JSON schema fields.

Webhook

A Webhook is an HTTP callback event trigger that automatically pushes real-time data payloads from a source platform to a receiver URL.

JWT (JSON Web Token)

JSON Web Token (JWT) is a compact, URL-safe cryptographic token standard (RFC 7519) used for stateless authentication and claims exchange.

OAuth 2.0

OAuth 2.0 is an industry-standard authorization framework allowing third-party applications to access user resources without exposing user credentials.

Authentication

Authentication is the security process of verifying the claimed identity of a user, service, or system component.

Authorization

Authorization is the process of determining whether an authenticated user or system has permission to perform a specific action on a resource.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is an authorization model that assigns permissions to defined Roles rather than individual users.

Microservices

Microservices is an architectural pattern that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled, independently deployable services.

Modular Monolith

A Modular Monolith is a software design pattern where an entire application lives in a single codebase structured into strict, decoupled domain modules.

Docker

Docker is an open-source containerization platform that packages software applications and dependencies into standardized containers.

Kubernetes (K8s)

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized workloads.

CI/CD Pipeline

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) automates software building, automated testing, and production code deployment.

Git

Git is a distributed version control system that tracks source code changes across multiple engineering collaborators.

GitHub

GitHub is a cloud platform for developer collaboration, code review, issue tracking, and automated CI/CD workflows.

Next.js

Next.js is Meta-partnered Vercel's React framework for building high-performance server-rendered web applications.

React

React is Meta's open-source JavaScript library for building declarative, component-based user interfaces.

Node.js

Node.js is Chrome's V8 asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime built for high-concurrency scalable network applications.

Express.js

Express.js is a minimal, unopinionated web framework for Node.js designed for building API servers and microservices.

TypeScript

TypeScript is Microsoft's strongly-typed syntactic superset of JavaScript that compiles to clean JavaScript.

JavaScript

JavaScript is the high-level, dynamic programming language powering the interactive web.

MongoDB

MongoDB is a leading document-oriented NoSQL database storing data in flexible JSON-like BSON documents.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an advanced, open-source object-relational database system known for strict ACID compliance and JSONB querying.

Redis

Redis is an in-memory data store used as a high-speed database, cache, message broker, and rate limiter.

Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform built for high-throughput, fault-tolerant real-time data pipelines.

RabbitMQ

RabbitMQ is an open-source message broker that routes asynchronous messages between distributed microservices.

Load Balancer

A Load Balancer distributes incoming network traffic across multiple backend server instances to ensure high availability.

Reverse Proxy

A Reverse Proxy sits in front of backend servers, forwarding client requests to internal services while providing security and caching.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a globally distributed network of edge servers that cache static assets near end-users.

Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is the process of generating full HTML pages on the web server for each user request before sending it to the browser.

Static Site Generation (SSG)

Static Site Generation (SSG) pre-renders HTML pages at build time, producing static assets ready for edge CDN hosting.

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) allows updating static pages in the background without rebuilding the entire application.

Edge Runtime

Edge Runtime executes lightweight serverless JavaScript functions on CDN nodes located physically closest to the end user.

Serverless Computing

Serverless Computing is an execution model where cloud providers automatically manage server provisioning, scaling, and maintenance.

Large Language Model (LLM)

A Large Language Model (LLM) is an artificial intelligence model trained on vast text data to process and generate human language.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an AI pattern that retrieves facts from private document databases to inform LLM responses.

Vector Embedding

A Vector Embedding is a numerical array representation of text or media that captures semantic meaning in multi-dimensional space.

Vector Database

A Vector Database is a specialized database engine built to store, index, and query high-dimensional vector embeddings efficiently.

Prompt Engineering

Prompt Engineering is the technical practice of designing, structuring, and optimizing input text instructions for AI models.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open protocol standard that enables AI models to connect securely to local data sources and tools.

AI Agent

An AI Agent is an autonomous system powered by an LLM that can reason, plan multi-step actions, and invoke tools to achieve defined goals.

ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is integrated software that centralizes operational processes across finance, HR, inventory, and sales.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software tracks customer interactions, sales lead pipelines, and client support cases.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model where applications are hosted by a vendor and accessed over the web.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a cloud environment for deploying and running applications without managing underlying OS hardware.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides raw virtualized computing resources (servers, storage, firewalls) over the cloud.

Healthcare

HIPAA Compliance

HIPAA Compliance refers to adhering to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy and security rules.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

GDPR is a comprehensive European data privacy law regulating how organizations collect, store, and process personal user data.

SOC 2 Compliance

SOC 2 is a security auditing framework verifying how cloud software vendors manage data based on Trust Services Criteria.

Encryption

Encryption is the process of encoding plain text information into unreadable ciphertext using mathematical cryptographic keys.

SQL Injection (SQLi)

SQL Injection is a code injection vulnerability where malicious SQL statements are executed by backend database drivers.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a web security vulnerability allowing attackers to inject malicious scripts into trusted websites.

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) tricks an authenticated user's browser into submitting unauthorized requests to a web application.

Rate Limiting

Rate Limiting is a traffic control technique that restricts the number of API requests a client can submit within a defined timeframe.

Caching

Caching is the practice of storing copies of data in high-speed temporary storage to fulfill subsequent requests faster.

Message Queue

A Message Queue is a buffer that stores asynchronous tasks for processing by background worker services.

WebSocket

WebSocket is a computer communications protocol providing full-duplex, two-way interactive communication channels over a single TCP connection.

gRPC

gRPC is Google's open-source High Performance Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework using Protocol Buffers and HTTP/2.

Micro-Frontend

Micro-Frontend is an architectural style where independently deliverable frontend web applications are composed into a single unified browser experience.

Event Sourcing

Event Sourcing captures all changes to application state as a sequence of immutable event objects stored in an append-only log.

CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation)

CQRS is a pattern that separates read data operations (Queries) from write data operations (Commands) into distinct models.

Domain-Driven Design (DDD)

Domain-Driven Design (DDD) is a software architecture philosophy that aligns codebase structure strictly with core business domain logic.

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a software engineering discipline where automated tests are written before writing production code.

Agile Methodology

Agile Methodology is an iterative software delivery framework prioritizing rapid feature releases, customer feedback, and continuous adaptation.

Scrum Framework

Scrum is an Agile management framework organizing software development teams around 2-week sprints, product backlogs, and daily standups.

Kanban

Kanban is a visual workflow management method that limits Work-in-Progress (WIP) to maximize software delivery efficiency.

NoSQL Database

NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases store unstructured or semi-structured data using key-value, document, column, or graph data models.

NewSQL

NewSQL databases combine the relational ACID compliance of SQL with the horizontal multi-region scalability of NoSQL.

Database Sharding

Sharding is a database architecture pattern that horizontally partitions single dataset tables across multiple independent database nodes.

Database Replication

Database Replication copies data from a primary write node to multiple read-replica follower servers in real time.

Data Lake

A Data Lake is a centralized storage repository holding vast amounts of raw, unformatted enterprise data in native format.

Data Warehouse

A Data Warehouse is a relational database system optimized for analytical processing (OLAP) and business intelligence reporting.

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)

ETL is a data integration pipeline process that Extracts data from sources, Transforms it into target schema, and Loads it into warehouses.

Business Intelligence (BI)

Business Intelligence (BI) comprises data analysis tools and dashboards that transform corporate operational data into actionable business insights.

Open Source Software

Open Source Software is code whose source code is publicly accessible for anyone to inspect, modify, enhance, and distribute freely.

Multi-tenant Architecture

Multi-tenant Architecture is a cloud software model where a single application instance serves multiple client organizations (tenants) securely.

Single-tenant Architecture

Single-tenant Architecture is a software deployment model where a dedicated application and database instance serves a single client exclusively.

Headless CMS

A Headless CMS is a back-end content management system that decouples content editing from frontend web page rendering via APIs.

Static Site Generator (SSG)

A Static Site Generator (SSG) is a build tool that compiles raw templates and content into pre-rendered static HTML files during project compilation.

Progressive Web App (PWA)

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web application that delivers native app experiences (offline access, push notifications, home screen installation).

Native Mobile App

A Native Mobile App is a smartphone application built using platform-specific languages (Swift for iOS, Kotlin for Android).

Cross-Platform Mobile App

A Cross-Platform App is a mobile application built from a single codebase that runs natively on both iOS and Android devices.

React Native

React Native is Meta's open-source framework for building cross-platform mobile apps for iOS and Android using React and JavaScript.

Flutter

Flutter is Google's open-source UI software development kit for building cross-platform apps using the Dart programming language.

Swift

Swift is Apple's modern, type-safe programming language engineered for building iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS applications.

Kotlin

Kotlin is JetBrains' modern, concise, cross-platform programming language and Google's official language for Android development.

Machine Learning (ML)

Machine Learning (ML) is a branch of artificial intelligence focused on building algorithms that learn patterns from data to make predictions.

Deep Learning

Deep Learning is a subset of Machine Learning based on multi-layered artificial neural networks that learn complex feature representations.

Neural Network

An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a computational model inspired by biological brain neurons, structured in input, hidden, and output layers.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the field of AI focused on enabling computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language.

Computer Vision

Computer Vision is an AI field enabling software systems to extract meaningful information from digital images, video feeds, and visual inputs.

Fine-Tuning

Fine-Tuning is the process of taking a pre-trained AI model and further training it on a specific dataset to adapt its style or output format.

Zero-Shot Learning

Zero-Shot Learning is an AI capability where a pre-trained model accurately performs a task without receiving any specific training examples.

Few-Shot Learning

Few-Shot Learning is a prompt engineering technique where 2 to 5 reference input-output examples are provided inside the prompt to guide AI model output.