Shorthand The practice in transcription of not writing down actual words but writing
down shortened symbols for those words
Silicon A raw material much like sand that can be shaped into many different end
products, such as semiconductors, beer bottles, and body parts
Silicon Valley The location where original technological innovation starts, in the
Northern California, San Jose, Santa Clara, Mountain View vicinity
Siloed systems The practice of building application system that has no interface or
exchange of other application systems, where there are common data between those
systems
Skip sequential The more of accessing data where data are accessed directly, followed
by long periods of sequential access
SKU Stock keeping unit—in retailing, the practice of tracking a record of each unit of
inventory
SLA Service-level agreement—the agreement within the corporation governing response
time of transaction systems and “up time,” the amount of time the system is up and
available
Slang Improper language—language that is used improperly, such as the word “ain't”
Sort To arrange data in a sequence based on values found in the data
Snapshot record A record of data taken at a moment in time that cannot be updated
Snowflake structure The dimensional modeling approach where more than one star
schema are joined together
Source code The uncompiled version of code
Spam Unwanted, unsolicited e-mail generated outside the corporation
Sparse index An index that contains only selected entries of data
Spider web systems The early architecture where applications grew in a siloed manner
Glossary