Skyscrapr Archipedia: Technology Architecture in Plain English

Data Model

A diagram that depicts data entities and their inter-relationships.

Data Flow Diagram

A diagram that shows the movement of data between processes, entities, and data stores within a system.

Database

A database is an organized collection of data. Its central concept is collecting and recalling records.

Typically there is a structural description of the things held in that database, known as a schema. The schema not only describes the objects in the database, but also the relationships between them.

There are a number of different ways to organize the schema or model of the database structure. The most common use today is the relational model which, in simple terms, represents the database information in the form of multiple related tables. Each table consists of rows and columns.

Other models such as the hierarchical model and the network model use a more explicit representation of relationships.

For more information on databases see https://www.microsoft.com/sql/default.mspx

Death March

The final phase of a project in which people commit long days and weekends, sleep on couches and eat catered meals all in order to get the work done to some end date.

Also ... a doomed software project, without any apparent hope of success, where the developers carry on anyway.

Dependency

A necessity or something that has to work right or come though for a larger project to be accomplished.

Variants include "Zero dependency" or has no effect on the project, and "Key dependency" or a really necessary necessity.

Deployment Diagram

A diagram that depicts a static view of the run time configuration of processing nodes and the components that run on those nodes.

Distributed Systems

Distributed systems, sometimes also called distributed computing, is decentralized computing using two or more computers communicating over a network to accomplish a common objective or task.

The main goal of a distributed computing system is to connect users and resources in a transparent, open, and scalable way.

Openness is the property such that each subsystem is continually open to interaction with other systems. Web Services protocols are standards which enable distributed systems to be extended and scaled. In general, an open system that scales has an advantage over a perfectly closed and self-contained system.

A scalable system is one that can easily be altered to accommodate changes in the number of users, resources and computing entities affected to it.

For more information see https://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/choosing/default.aspx

Dogfood

Software code used within Microsoft for software not fit for human consumption but good enough for internal purposes, very unrefined and buggy (that is full of bugs), but containing the basic nutrients.

"It's time for us to eat our own dogfood."

Domain

Domain is an area of knowledge or activity characterized by a family of related systems.

Domain Model

A model depicting major business classes or entities and the relationships between them. It is common to use class diagrams or data diagrams for this purpose.

Drinking from the Fire Hose

Having an overwhelming amount of information thrown at you, commonly at the start of a new job or project.

Drop

A Microsoft term for a specific release of a product or documentation set. "We will rollout a drop of the authoring tool next month."

Drop Point

A Microsoft term for the share drive or location to which the release files are copied when completed.

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