An indexing technique in which pointers to data are kept in a “Balanced Tree” structure such that all referenced data is equally accessible in an equal timeframe. It is also a tree data structure which keeps data sorted so that searching, inserting and deleting can be done in logarithmic amortized time.

A storage and recovery strategy that protects against business information loss resulting from hardware, software, or network faults.

The normalized data structures maintained in the target warehousing database. Also known as the detail data.

1. A starting point or condition against which future changes are measured. 2. A named set of object versions which fixes a configuration at a particular point in time. A baseline normally represents a milestone or key deliverable of a project.

The ability to extract, cleanse, and transfer data in two directions among different types of databases, including hierarchical, networked, and relational databases.

Bit Map Indexing is a technique commonly used in relational databases where the application uses binary coding in representing data. Originally used only for Low Cardinality data, recent advances such as Sybase IQ have allowed this technique to be used for High Cardinality data as well.

A software mechanism that prevents users from querying the operational database once transaction loads reach a certain level.

A plan for determining in advance the expenditure of time, money, etc.

A software-based mechanism designed to move large data files. It supports compression, blocking and buffering to optimize transfer times.

An enterprise, commercial entity, or firm in either the private or public sector, concerned with providing products or services to satisfy customer requirements.

A component of information technology infrastructure that represent all business activities in an organization, whether they are automated or manual. They utilize the data resource and the plat-form resource to perform specific processes and tasks.

A statement of business intent measured subjectively; for example, to move up market, or to develop a sustainable level of growth; usually strategic or tactical with a 3-5 year horizon.

One of the four layers of an information systems architecture. Business architecture describes the functions a business performs and the information it uses.

The set of business processes within the scope of a project.

Any external, management, or other factor that restricts a business or system development in terms of resource availability, dependencies, timescales, or some other factor.

Information about people, places, things, business rules, and events, which is used to operate the business.

The people, information, and tasks that support the fulfillment of a business objective.

People that thoroughly understand the business and the data supporting the business. They know the specific business rules and processes unique to the organization or organizations within the scope of the common metadata.

Something an enterprise does, or needs to do, in order to achieve its objectives.

A statement of business intent.

A uniquely identifiable geographic location, site, or place from which one or more business units may wholly or partly operate.

The information whereby users can understand and access the data warehouse. It focuses on what data is in the warehouse, how it was transformed, the source, and the timeliness of the data.

A view of the business at any given point in time. The view can be from a process, data, event or resource perspective, and can be the past, present or future state of the business.

A physical or logical object of significance to a business; for example, a sales order, department, assembly, item, balance, or invoice. A business object is analogous to a class in object-oriented terminology.

A classification of a business organization into one of several functional categories. Each business organization type has a distinct set of business requirements. All the business organizations of a certain type will typically require similar applications and system capabilities. A given site may house one or more business organization types. Since business organizations may be related in a hierarchy, a high level business organization may be composed of several business organizations of different types. For the purposes of application architecture analysis and design, it is generally useful to decompose the hierarchy of business organizations until it is composed of atomic organization types.

A statement of the level or urgency of important business needs.

The complete response that a business makes to an event. A business process entails the execution of a sequence of one or more process steps. It has a clearly defined deliverable or outcome. A Business Process is defined by the business event that triggers the process, the inputs and outputs, all the operational steps required to produce the output, the sequential relationship between the process steps, the business decisions that are part of the event response, and the flow of material and/or information between process steps.

The activity by which an enterprise reexamines its goals and how it achieves them, followed by a disciplined approach of business process redesign. A method that supports this activity.

A rule under which an organization operates. A policy or decision that influences the process step.

A schema that represents the structure of business transactions used by clients in the real world. It is considered to be unnormalized data.

A combination of people and automated applications organized to meet a particular set of business objectives.

A unit of work acted upon by a data capture system to create, modify, or delete business data. Each transaction represents a single valued fact describing a single business event.

Part of an organization treated for any purpose as a separate entity within the parent organization. Examples include a department or distribution center.

The process of identifying the data needed to support business activities, acquiring or capturing those data, and maintaining them in the data resource.

The situation where the business need for data at a specific location drive the development of a data site and the distribution of data to the data site. It is independent of the existence of a telecommunications network

The process whereby stakeholders, e.g. end-users as well as executives, come to see the goals of an organizational or change effort as their own; a key component in achieving change successfully.