Assembly is Microsoft's term for the module that is created when a DLL or .EXE is complied by a .NET compiler.



Binary Large Object (BLOB)


Character Large Object (CLOB)


data provider

As the term is used with Oracle Data Provider for .NET, a data provider is the connected component in the ADO.NET model and transfers data between a data source and the DataSet.

dirty writes

Dirty writes means writing uncommitted or dirty data.


DDL refers to data definition language, which includes statements defining or changing data structure.


Document Object Model (DOM) is an application program interface (API) for HTML and XML documents. It defines the logical structure of documents and the way that a document is accessed and manipulated.

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT)



Flush or flushing refers to recording changes (that is, sending modified data) to the database.


The degree of load in the Oracle database. The lighter load is better and vice versa.

implicit database connection

The connection that is implicitly available from the context of the .NET stored procedure execution.


A term used in object-based languages such as C# to refer to the creation of an object of a specific class.

invalidation message

The content of a change notification which indicates that the cache is now invalid

Large Object (LOB)

The class of SQL datatype that is further divided into internal LOBs and external LOBs. Internal LOBs include BLOBs, CLOBs, and NCLOBs while external LOBs include BFILEs.

Microsoft .NET Framework Class Library

The Microsoft .NET Framework Class Library provides the classes for the .NET framework model.


National Character Large Object (NCLOB)


Oracle Net Services



An OracleDataReader is a read-only, forward-only result set.

Oracle XML DB

Oracle XML DB is the name for a distinct group of technologies related to high-performance XML storage and retrieval that are available within the Oracle database. Oracle XML DB is not a separate server.

Oracle XML DB is based on the W3C XML data model.


The Oracle procedural language extension to SQL.

primary key


reference semantics

Reference semantics indicates that assignment is to a reference (an address such as a pointer) rather than to a value. See value semantics.

result set

The output of a SQL query, consisting of one or more rows of data.

Safe Type Mapping

Safe Type Mapping allows the OracleDataAdapter to populate a DataSet with .NET type representations of Oracle data without any data or precision loss.



stored procedure

A stored procedure is a PL/SQL block that Oracle stores in the database and can be executed from an application.

Transparent Application Failover (TAF)

Transparent Application Failover is a runtime failover for high-availability environments. It enables client applications to automatically reconnect to the database if the connection fails. This reconnect happens automatically from within the Oracle Call Interface (OCI) library.


Unicode is a universal encoded character set that enables information from any language to be stored using a single character set.


URL (Universal Resource Locator).

value semantics

Value semantics indicates that assignment copies the value, not the reference or address (such as a pointer). See reference semantics.


XML Path Language (XPath), based on a W3C recommendation, is a language for addressing parts of an XML document. It is designed to be used by both XSLT and XPointer. It can be used as a searching or query language as well as in hypertext linking.