| Facet | A group of terms which share a common characteristic. |
| Failover | When one device stops working and another device automatically takes its place, typically after a set amount of time has lapsed since the first device stopped responding. Basically, the work done by the device figuratively fails over onto the other device. |
| FDDI | Networking. Fiber Distributed Data Interface. Token passing ring network running at 100Mbps.
|
| FDF | This is a format for handling forms within PDF documents. |
| File | All the data comprising a document or part of a document (page image) held under a single naming code. |
| File name | The physical name of the item required when it is checked-out onto the users desktop file system. |
| Finding Aid | A tool which describes the provenance of and the relationship between archival records, and which also supports retrieval of archival records. There exists a great variety of finding aids, such as overviews of fronds, inventories, indexes, etc. |
| Finding aids | Reference material such as catalogues, lists and indexes providing information on the records and made available in the repository. |
| Firewall | Software that protects an organisation's computer systems from problems such as viruses that can be carried by internet technologies or hackers seeking to gain unauthorised access. |
| Firewire (IEEE 1394) | A very fast external bus standard that supports data transfer rates of up to
400Mbps (in 1394a) and 800Mbps (in 1394b).
Products supporting the 1394 standard go under different names, depending on the company. Apple, which originally developed the technology, uses the
trademarked name FireWire. Other companies use other names, such as i.link and Lynx, to describe their 1394 products.
A single 1394 port can be used to connect up 63 external devices. In
addition to its high speed, 1394 also supports isochronous data --
delivering data at a guaranteed rate. This makes it ideal for devices that
need to transfer high levels of data in real-time, such as video devices.
Like USB, 1394 supports both Plug-and-Play and hot plugging, and also
provides power to peripheral devices.
|
| Flat File | A database that contains a single table and can be easily represented using plain text. This type of database contrasts with a relational database, which can contain any number of tables that are linked together. Often, to keep things simple when transferring data between organizations, people will request a flat file. Common flat file text formats include tab-delimited and CSV. |
| FLOP (Floating Point Operation) | This describes a single manipulation of a floating point number in a microprocessor. One measure of the speed of a microprocessor is how many FLOPs can be accomplished in a second. |
| FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) | The practice of spreading general unease about a situation where all the details are not known or not controllable. |
| Full Text Search | Documents may be indexed and searched for based on the content of the document. Alternate formats may be used for indexing. Metadata may also be full text indexed
.
|
| Functional requirement | A statement of WHAT the system is required to do. |
| Fuzzy Logic | A form of boolean logic that deals with the idea of partial truths. Truth can be considered as a scale between completely true and completely false. Often used in decision making systems dealing with imprecise data. |
Glossary
