EcosystemAn ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the system through photosynthesis and is incorporated into plant tissue. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and energy through the system. They also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present.
Record linkageRecord linkage (also known as data matching, data linkage, entity resolution, and many other terms) is the task of finding records in a data set that refer to the same entity across different data sources (e.g., data files, books, websites, and databases). Record linkage is necessary when joining different data sets based on entities that may or may not share a common identifier (e.g., database key, URI, National identification number), which may be due to differences in record shape, storage location, or curator style or preference.
Hardware description languageIn computer engineering, a hardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure and behavior of electronic circuits, and most commonly, digital logic circuits. A hardware description language enables a precise, formal description of an electronic circuit that allows for the automated analysis and simulation of an electronic circuit.
Performance engineeringPerformance engineering encompasses the techniques applied during a systems development life cycle to ensure the non-functional requirements for performance (such as throughput, latency, or memory usage) will be met. It may be alternatively referred to as systems performance engineering within systems engineering, and software performance engineering or application performance engineering within software engineering.
User interfaceIn the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, while the machine simultaneously feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls and process controls.
Data lineageData lineage includes the data origin, what happens to it, and where it moves over time. Data lineage provides visibility and simplifies tracing errors back to the root cause in a data analytics process. It also enables replaying specific portions or inputs of the data flow for step-wise debugging or regenerating lost output. Database systems use such information, called data provenance, to address similar validation and debugging challenges.
Data streamIn connection-oriented communication, a data stream is the transmission of a sequence of digitally encoded signals to convey information. Typically, the transmitted symbols are grouped into a series of packets. Data streaming has become ubiquitous. Anything transmitted over the Internet is transmitted as a data stream. Using a mobile phone to have a conversation transmits the sound as a data stream. In a formal way, a data stream is any ordered pair where: is a sequence of tuples and is a sequence of positive real time intervals.
Presentation layerIn the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking, the presentation layer is layer 6 and serves as the data translator for the network. It is sometimes called the syntax layer. Within the service layering semantics of the OSI network architecture, the presentation layer responds to service requests from the application layer and issues service requests to the session layer through a unique presentation service access point (PSAP).
Parallel computingParallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level, instruction-level, data, and task parallelism. Parallelism has long been employed in high-performance computing, but has gained broader interest due to the physical constraints preventing frequency scaling.
Software performance testingIn software quality assurance, performance testing is in general a testing practice performed to determine how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload. It can also serve to investigate, measure, validate or verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage. Performance testing, a subset of performance engineering, is a computer science practice which strives to build performance standards into the implementation, design and architecture of a system.
