Terminology¶
Contents
The following words and phrases are used within the dojo.data quickstart and store documentation. Where possible, these terms have been related to their equivalent database concept. Before reading the rest of the quickstart, it is highly recommended that you familiarize yourself with the following terms.
Terms¶
| Term | Equivalent Database Term | Description |
| data store | cursor | A JavaScript object that reads data from a data source and makes that data available as data items through dojo.data APIs. |
| data source | database | The place that the raw data comes from. For example, in a CsvStore, the data source would be the .csv formatted file that the store loaded. In general, the data source could be a file, a database server, a Web service, or something else completely. They can be as simple as flat, table-like rows, or as complex as a full hierarchical database with nested details. |
| item | row | A data item that has attributes with attribute values. |
| attribute | column | One of the fields or properties of an item. |
| value | The contents of an attribute for a given item. | |
| reference | A value that points to another data item | |
| identity | primary key | An identifier that can be used to uniquely identify an item within the context of a single datastore. Note that identifiers should be immutable. |
| query | WHERE clause of the SQL select. | A specification or request that asks a datastore for some subset of the items it knows about. A query is often an object with a set of attribute/value pairs that define what attributes should be matched. It is possible, however, that the query could be a string or a number. Note: It is highly recommended that all stores use an object structure of attribute name/value pairs as thequery format for consistency between stores. |
| dojo.data.API | JDBC or ODBC | The standard set of functions that datastore implements. The dojo.data.api module includes a set of APIs (such as Read and Write) and a datastore can implement one or more of the APIs. |
| internal data representation | The private data structures that a datastore uses to cache data in local memory (for example XML DOM nodes, anonymous JSON objects, or arrays of arrays). | |
| request | SQL select | The parameters used to limit and sort a set of items. This includes the query, sorting attributes, upper and lower limits, and callbacks. |