Glossary

Application Service Provider (ASP) An ASP is an agent or broker that aggregates, facilitates and brokers IT services to deliver IT-enabled business solutions across a network via subscription-based pricing.

attribute In XML, a name="value" pair that can be placed in the start tag of an element. The value must be quoted with single or double quotes.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) CSS defines a stylesheet language for HTML 4.0. CSS allows a Web page designer to separately specify style elements of a Web page, such as colors, fonts and font styles.

case-sensitive Indicates whether an application, processor, or operating system distinguishes between upper and lower case. If it does, it is case-sensitive. XML tags are case-sensitive, but HTML tags are not.

Customer relationship management (CRM) CRM includes the systems and infrastructure required to analyze, capture and share all parts of the customer’s relationship with the enterprise. From a strategy perspective, it represents a process to measure and allocate organizational resources to those activities that have the greatest return and impact on profitable customer relationships.

content model In XML, the expression specifying what elements and data are allowed within an element.

Document Object Model (DOM) This allows the representation and manipulation of an XML document in memory as a programming object. DOM is defined by the World-Wide Web Consortium.

DOM (see Document Object Model).

DOM Tree A DOM Tree is an in-memory representation of an XML Document.

Document Type Definition (DTD) A DTD is a definition of which Elements and Attributes are acceptable in a specific XML file. The DTD therefore defines a subset of XML which may be used for a particular application.

EBNF Extended Backus-Naur Form. A formal set of production rules that comprise a grammar defining another language, such as XML.

Electronic data interchange The automatic machine-to-machine transfer of trading documents (e.g., invoices and purchase orders) using electronic networks such as the internet. Originally conducted only through value-added networks, EDI is gradually moving to the Internet.

element In XML, a start tag and its end tag, plus the content between the tags. An empty tag is also an element.

empty declaration In XML, the DTD declaration for an empty tag. For example, if <foo/> is an empty tag, the empty declaration looks like: <!ELEMENT foo EMPTY>.

empty tag In XML, a start and end tag combined in one tag. The tag has a trailing slash, so an XML parser can immediately recognize it as an empty tag and not bother looking for a matching end tag. For example, if foo is an empty tag, it looks like <foo/>.

entity In XML, an entity declaration provides the ability to have constants or replacement strings, which are expanded by a pre-processor. An entity declaration maps some token to a replacement string. Later the token can be prefixed with the & character and the replacement string is put in its place.

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) The Enterprise JavaBeans specification defines a way of building transactionally aware business objects in Java.

Java Server Page (JSP) Java Server Pages are Web pages that include dynamic tags which are executed on the server. JSPs are the presentation layer for Web-based applications built in Java.