Glossary
This glossary includes terms that are often used when using ScalarDL.
Security termsβ
The following are security terms.
administrative domainβ
An administrative domain is a boundary within which entities or systems are governed by the same administrative authorities, allowing for controlled data and resource management.
authenticityβ
Authenticity is the assurance that data, messages, or transactions originate from verified sources, preventing impersonation or forgery.
blockchainβ
A blockchain is a distributed-ledger technology where data is recorded in blocks and linked together in a chain, ensuring transparency, immutability, and security.
Byzantine faultβ
A Byzantine fault refers to an arbitrary fault regardless of maliciousness, such as software bugs and data tampering, posing a challenge to maintaining consistency in distributed systems.
Byzantine-fault detectionβ
Byzantine-fault detection is the process of identifying nodes that exhibit Byzantine faults in a distributed system, supporting system reliability by flagging potential threats.
Byzantine-fault toleranceβ
Byzantine-fault tolerance is a system's ability to continue functioning correctly even when some nodes act maliciously or inconsistently, often through consensus mechanisms.
CAβ
A certificate authority (CA) is a trusted entity that issues digital certificates to verify the identity of organizations and individuals, ensuring secure communication through public key infrastructure (PKI).
certificateβ
A certificate is a digital document that verifies the identity of an entity by using cryptographic signatures, ensuring secure communication and trust.
digital signatureβ
A digital signature is a cryptographic technique that verifies the authenticity and integrity of a message or document, confirming it was created by a known sender and having the non-repudiation property.
ECDSAβ
Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is a cryptographic algorithm that uses elliptic curve mathematics to create digital signatures, providing strong security with shorter key lengths compared to RSA.
HMACβ
HMAC (hash-based message authentication code) is a cryptographic function that ensures data integrity and authenticity by hashing the data along with a secret key. Unlike a digital signature, HMAC does not have the non-repudiation property.
ledger databaseβ
A ledger database is a tamper-evident, verifiable database that records data in a sequential manner, supporting traceability and verification, often with cryptographic proof for integrity.
private keyβ
A private key is a secret cryptographic key used to sign or decrypt data, ensuring secure and authorized access.
public keyβ
A public key is a cryptographic key shared publicly that enables users to encrypt messages or verify digital signatures, often paired with a private key for secure communication.
RSAβ
RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) is an asymmetric cryptographic algorithm that uses the difficulty of factoring large prime numbers to enable secure data transmission, digital signatures, and key exchange.
smart contractβ
A smart contract is a computer program that automatically enforces and verifies rules, terms, or conditions, typically used in ledger and blockchain systems.
tamper evidenceβ
Tamper evidence ensures the detection of unauthorized modifications of digital data, typically through secure data management systems like ledger databases and blockchains.
TLSβ
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol that ensures privacy and data integrity between client-server applications over the internet, replacing its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
Database and distributed-system termsβ
The following are database and distributed-system terms.
ACIDβ
Atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) is a set of properties that ensure database transactions are processed reliably, maintaining integrity even in cases of errors or system failures.
concurrency controlβ
Concurrency control in databases ensures that multiple transactions can occur simultaneously without causing data inconsistency, usually through mechanisms like locking or timestamp ordering.
consensusβ
Consensus in distributed systems refers to the process of achieving agreement among multiple computers or nodes on a single data value or system state.
linearizabilityβ
Linearizability is a strong consistency model in distributed systems where operations appear to occur atomically in some order consistent with real-time ordering, and each operation takes effect between its start and end.
Paxosβ
Paxos is a family of protocols used in distributed systems to achieve consensus, even in the presence of node failures.
PITRβ
Point-in-time recovery (PITR) allows a database to be restored to a previous state at any specific time, usually after an unintended event like data corruption.
read-committed isolationβ
Read-committed isolation is an isolation level where each transaction sees only committed data, preventing dirty reads but allowing non-repeatable reads.
serializable isolationβ
Serializable isolation (serializability) is the highest isolation level in transactional systems, ensuring that the outcome of concurrently executed transactions is the same as if they were executed sequentially.
snapshot isolationβ
Snapshot isolation is an isolation level that allows transactions to read a consistent snapshot of the database, protecting them from seeing changes made by other transactions until they complete.
transactionβ
A transaction in databases is a sequence of operations treated as a single logical unit of work, ensuring consistency and integrity, typically conforming to ACID properties.
two-phase lockingβ
Two-phase locking is a concurrency control protocol that enforces serializability by acquiring all required locks before releasing any, in two distinct phases.