Web Technology Terms

John Kuczmarski

Ajax  -- “Asynchronous Javascript and XML” allows for instantaneous transfer incremental updates of web technologies such as Javascript, CSS, HTML, XHTML, DOM, XML, XSLT, and XMLHttpRequest object.  By eliminating the need to refresh the entire web page upon each update information retrieval, Ajax assures faster updates and “remote scripting” where web-based apps behave more like LAN.-based apps (server-side more like client-side).  (Ajax is not the son of Telamon from Troy).

ASCII – “American Standard Code for Information Interchange” is the built-in set standard for representing all keyboard characters with computer code.  ASCII is entered into a program and processed with the hexadecimal number system.  ASCII only takes advantage of half of the typical 8-bit byte storage unit, using 4-bits to create the 128 characters, and ANSI has 128 additional characters to have the full 256 character set.

ANSI – “American National Standard Institute standard character set is a set of 256 characters.  Out of the 256 character combinations that can be held by each byte (8 bits) ANSI and ASCII together make the 256 character set.  The first 128 are ASCII and the second 128 are foreign language character and special characters, making it simply an extended ASCII.

ASP – “Active Server Pages” are Microsoft’s version of the JavaServer Pages (JSPs), using an HTML page and Microsoft’s VBScript or Jscript to create dynamically updated web pages.

ATM – “Asynchronous Transfer Mode” is a Telecommunications Standard for cell relay that revolves on the key concepts of fixed cell size and “fixed logical circuit” as improvements upon TCP/IP.  ATM assures QoS (Quality of Service) because of a logical fixed circuit, ensuring voice and video travel at constant bit rates to a constant line.  This is similar to biking at a faster cadence and lower gear.   Because of the fixed cell size, 53 bytes, the ATM protocol already knows the cell size and doesn’t waste time measuring packet size from start to end.  The faster transfer rates from fixed cell size and fixed circuit prevent huge media files from hogging bandwidth and assure faster data travel.

DHMTL – “Dynamic Hypertext Mark-up Language” is the generic term for HTML pages that have animated text, events, and actions.

DOM – “Document Object Model” is created by the W3C.  It gives coders the power to update and manage style, structure, attributes, and content of a web page.  The updates occur with various programming languages.  IE and Netscape use different DOMs, but W3C created a standard DOM.  DOM creates cross-platform and language-neutrality (Java, C++, Perl, ActiveX, Python, and ECMAScript) compatibility.  The DOM references all HTML objects by going through the DOM tree, where text, images, css, and events are classified as “nodes”.  If Javascript is the assembly instruction of the parts --nuts, bolts, frames, pieces – to a piece of furniture, DOM is the illustration of those parts.  Anytime Javascript displays something on a page, it is with DOM code.  An example is var anchor = document.anchorTags.length, where “var anchor =” is javascript, but “document.anchorTags.length” is DOM code.  In Javascript, DOM is implemented with the DOM1 (DOM Level 1) host object “document.methodName”.  The future of publishing full-fledged web-apps will be with some kind of standard DOM. 

Javascript – Javascript is the “object scripting language” for the web, developed by Netscape programmer, Brenden Eich, a leader of Mozilla today (Microsoft’s not so widespread version is Jscript).  Although much simpler than Java and C++, Javascript is has a variety of those languages with extremely simple string usage, no variable types, and platform neutrality.  The Mozilla Javascript engine is SpiderMonkey.  Javascript manipulates DOM objects, but the coder can use the DOM to retrieve and update information on a page with javascript (like using DOM to retrieve a HTML textfield to then add to a Javascript program to concatenate together the string to make a meaningful sentence.  In reference to DOM, Javascript handles all loops, reiterations, variable creations, and concatenations, while DOM is charge of all page displays, page information retrievals, and alert boxes.

Extensibility –Extensibility is a principle of “system design”.  If something is extensible future growth can occur quickly and efficiently.  Extensibility means that a new functionality can be easily implemented or an existing functionality can be quickly modified to change the system.  While the opposite of extensibility would be “etched in stone”, actual extensibility doesn’t merely imply the other extreme, “changing on whim with no foundation”, either.  Extensibility is future growth capacity to a system with the smallest amount of difficulty in changing the original system.

Mozilla – Mozilla, more specifically the Mozilla Open-Source project and the Mozilla Foundation, is a not-for-profit organization started July 2003, supported by AOL’s Netscape division.

mSQL – “mini Structured Query Language” is a relational Database Management System (DBMS) that can operate on Unix, Windows, Mac, and OS/2.  It uses the subset of ANSI to keep it compact and readily accessible.  It was created by David Hughes as a PhD research project in 1994.

MySQL – “my Structured Query Language” is a widespread open-source relational DBMS, operates on Unix, Windows, and Mac (but not OS/2, making it different from mSQL), and is widely used for web apps and imbedded apps.  The great thing about MySQL is that it’s free with the GNU license.  It is compatible with Perl, Python, TCL, and the application programming interface is a superset of the C API  mSQL, making strongly related to David Hughe’s mSQL.

PHP – “PHP Hypertext Preprocessor” (originally “Personal Home Page”) is a server-side scripting language frequently used to extract database data (mainly mSQL) and display it on a web-page.  It is derived from Java, C, and Perl and is support by NT/2000 and Unix.

VBScript – “Visual Basic Script” is Microsoft’s subset of Visual Basic and is used for client-side and server-side (within Active Server Pages) processing.  VBScript is also used with a windows script host to perform actions on a Windows machine.  Theoretically this sounds like a security breach, but really it’s just a server-side scripting language.

XHTML – “Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language” is a hybrid between XML 1.0 and HTML 4.0.  It uses three XML namespaces – which prevent custom-named tags from being used to much or something --to qualify elements and attribute names.  Like XML, XHTML can extend proprietary tags and must be coded more rigorously than HTML.  XML Voice allows Voice HTML to interact with the screen.

XML – “”Extensible Mark-up Language” uses similar tag structures as HTML, but the coder can create his own tags with this metalanguage, updating pages with style sheets and scripts.  The key feature is its extensibility, openness for expansion, to change the actual elements, where HTML adjusts what the pre-defined elements contain.  It incorporates a lot of database structure, too.  It is the backbone of some e-commerce web technology.