Official Data
Definition: Data become official when an agency certifies them for public reporting and uses them for their official purposes. What This Means: Education agencies are required to report certain data and choose to report others. Because today’s information systems facilitate the calculation ...
OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)
Definition: OLAP is a category of software tools that provides analysis of data stored in a database. OLAP tools enable users to analyze different dimensions of multidimensional data. What This Means: OLAP enables end-users to perform ad hoc analysis of data in ...
Open Architecture
Definition: A type of computer or software architecture that allows adding, upgrading, and swapping components. What This Means: With full knowledge that claims to be open architecture vary in their accuracy, the advantage of an open architecture is that an agency has ...
Open Email Relay
Definition: An open email relay occurs when a mail server processes a mail message where neither the sender nor the recipient is a local user. Need another definition?
Open Source
Definition: Computer programs or operating systems for which the source code is publicly available are called open-source software. Inherent in the open-source philosophy is the freedom of a distributed community of programmers to modify and improve the code. The most widely ...
Open Source
Definition: Software in which the source code is openly available. What This Means: There is often no cost for use of open source applications; however, some companies offer value added support at a fee that is typically less than the license for ...
Open Standards
Definition: Open standards are those specifications for hardware or software that are developed by a standards organization or a consortium involved in supporting a standard and which anyone can adopt or use. What This Means: Open standards are available to anyone. Complying ...
Operating System Patches
Definition: These are updates that fix an inherent flaw in your operating system, the basic program that runs your computer. Patches are released as needed from your operating system vendor (such as Microsoft or Apple) and should be installed as soon ...
Option
Definition: When an option set is used, an option is one of the defined, valid choices available. What This Means: Each option or choice needs to be very well defined within the metadata dictionary. This is one of the keys to data ...
Option Set
Definition: At times known as code sets, option sets are the valid choices available as categories for an element with a defined set of values. What This Means: In the management of information, open-ended choices are problematic for analysis and reporting. Whenever ...
