Monday, February 10, 2003		ITerminology

Open Source Initiative: Abbreviated OSI, a non-profit organisation that promotes the integrity of the open source definition by certifying products with the OSI Certified Open Source Software mark. OSI is comprised of board members who make up its directorship and is not a membership organisation.

Chat bot: Short for chat robot, a computer program that simulates human conversation, or chat, through artificial intelligence. Typically, a chat bot will communicate with a real person, but applications are being developed in which two chat bots can communicate with each other. Chat bots are used in applications such as e-commerce customer service, call centers and Internet gaming. Chat bots used for these purposes are typically limited to conversations regarding a specialised purpose and not for the entire range of human communication.

MySQL: MySQL is an open source RDBMS that relies on SQL for processing the data in the database. MySQL provides APIs for the scripting languages C, C++, Eiffel, Java, Perl, PHP and Python. In addition, OLE DB and ODBC providers exist for MySQL data connection in the Microsoft environment. A MySQL .NET Native Provider is also available, which allows native MySQL to .NET access without the need for OLE DB. MySQL is most commonly used for Web applications and for embedded applications and has become a popular alternative to proprietary database systems because of its speed and reliability. MySQL can run on UNIX, Windows and Mac OS.