1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

Active Directory: The Windows implementation of a general-purpose directory service, which uses LDAP as its primary access protocol. Active Directory stores information about a variety of objects in the network such as user accounts, computer accounts, groups, and all related credential information used by Kerberos [MS-KILE]. Active Directory is either deployed as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) or Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), which are both described in [MS-ADOD]: Active Directory Protocols Overview.

Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS): A Microsoft implementation of a federation services provider, which provides a security token service (STS) that can issue security tokens to a caller using various protocols such as WS-Trust, WS-Federation, and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) version 2.0.

Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS): A directory service (DS) implemented by a domain controller (DC). AD LDS is a deployment of Active Directory [MS-ADTS]. The most significant difference between AD LDS and Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is that AD LDS does not host domain naming contexts (domain NCs). A server can host multiple AD LDS DCs. Each DC is an independent AD LDS instance, with its own independent state. AD LDS can be run as an operating system DS or as a directory service provided by a standalone application (Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)).

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) character set: A character set defined by a code page approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The term "ANSI" as used to signify Windows code pages is a historical reference and a misnomer that persists in the Windows community. The source of this misnomer stems from the fact that the Windows code page 1252 was originally based on an ANSI draft, which became International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Standard 8859-1 [ISO/IEC-8859-1]. In Windows, the ANSI character set can be any of the following code pages: 1252, 1250, 1251, 1253, 1254, 1255, 1256, 1257, 1258, 874, 932, 936, 949, or 950. For example, "ANSI application" is usually a reference to a non-Unicode or code-page-based application. Therefore, "ANSI character set" is often misused to refer to one of the character sets defined by a Windows code page that can be used as an active system code page; for example, character sets defined by code page 1252 or character sets defined by code page 950. Windows is now based on Unicode, so the use of ANSI character sets is strongly discouraged unless they are used to interoperate with legacy applications or legacy data.

Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF): A modified version of Backus-Naur Form (BNF), commonly used by Internet specifications. ABNF notation balances compactness and simplicity with reasonable representational power. ABNF differs from standard BNF in its definitions and uses of naming rules, repetition, alternatives, order-independence, and value ranges. For more information, see [RFC5234].

authentication: The ability of one entity to determine the identity of another entity.

authorization: The secure computation of roles and accesses granted to an identity.

certificate: A certificate is a collection of attributes and extensions that can be stored persistently. The set of attributes in a certificate can vary depending on the intended usage of the certificate. A certificate securely binds a public key to the entity that holds the corresponding private key. A certificate is commonly used for authentication and secure exchange of information on open networks, such as the Internet, extranets, and intranets. Certificates are digitally signed by the issuing certification authority (CA) and can be issued for a user, a computer, or a service. The most widely accepted format for certificates is defined by the ITU-T X.509 version 3 international standards. For more information about attributes and extensions, see [RFC3280] and [X509] sections 7 and 8.

certificate services: The Microsoft implementation of a certification authority (CA) that is part of the server operating system. Certificate services include tools to manage issued certificates, publish CA certificates and CRLs, configure CAs, import and export certificates and keys, and recover archived private keys.

certification authority (CA): A third party that issues public key certificates. Certificates serve to bind public keys to a user identity. Each user and certification authority (CA) can decide whether to trust another user or CA for a specific purpose, and whether this trust should be transitive. For more information, see [RFC3280].

code page: An ordered set of characters of a specific script in which a numerical index (code-point value) is associated with each character. Code pages are a means of providing support for character sets and keyboard layouts used in different countries/regions. Devices such as the display and keyboard can be configured to use a specific code page and to switch from one code page (such as the United States) to another (such as Portugal) at the user's request.

Common Information Model (CIM): The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) model that describes how to represent real-world computer and network objects. CIM uses an object-oriented paradigm, where managed objects are modeled using the concepts of classes and instances. See [DMTF-DSP0004].

conceptual schema definition language (CSDL): A language that is based on XML and that can be used to define conceptual models that are based on the Entity Data Model (EDM).

directory service (DS): A service that stores and organizes information about a computer network's users and network shares, and that allows network administrators to manage users' access to the shares. See also Active Directory.

Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM): The Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) specification that defines how components communicate over networks, as specified in [MS-DCOM].

domain: A set of users and computers sharing a common namespace and management infrastructure. At least one computer member of the set must act as a domain controller (DC) and host a member list that identifies all members of the domain, as well as optionally hosting the Active Directory service. The domain controller provides authentication of members, creating a unit of trust for its members. Each domain has an identifier that is shared among its members. For more information, see [MS-AUTHSOD] section 1.1.1.5 and [MS-ADTS].

encryption: In cryptography, the process of obscuring information to make it unreadable without special knowledge.

Group Policy: A mechanism that allows the implementer to specify managed configurations for users and computers in an Active Directory service environment.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): An application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web.

interface: A specification in a Component Object Model (COM) server that describes how to access the methods of a class. For more information, see [MS-DCOM].

Interface Definition Language (IDL): The International Standards Organization (ISO) standard language for specifying the interface for remote procedure calls. For more information, see [C706] section 4.

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON): A text-based, data interchange format that is used to transmit structured data, typically in Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (AJAX) web applications, as described in [RFC7159]. The JSON format is based on the structure of ECMAScript (Jscript, JavaScript) objects.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): The primary access protocol for Active Directory. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an industry-standard protocol, established by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which allows users to query and update information in a directory service (DS), as described in [MS-ADTS]. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol can be either version 2 [RFC1777] or version 3 [RFC3377].

Microsoft Interface Definition Language (MIDL): The Microsoft implementation and extension of the OSF-DCE Interface Definition Language (IDL). MIDL can also mean the Interface Definition Language (IDL) compiler provided by Microsoft. For more information, see [MS-RPCE].

namespace: An abstract container that provides context for the items (names, technical terms, or words) that it holds and allows disambiguation of items that have the same name (residing in different namespaces).

NetBIOS: A particular network transport that is part of the LAN Manager protocol suite. NetBIOS uses a broadcast communication style that was applicable to early segmented local area networks. A protocol family including name resolution, datagram, and connection services. For more information, see [RFC1001] and [RFC1002].

Office Open XML (OOXML): A family of XML schemas, specified in [ECMA-376], that is used for office productivity applications.

remote procedure call (RPC): A communication protocol used primarily between client and server. The term has three definitions that are often used interchangeably: a runtime environment providing for communication facilities between computers (the RPC runtime); a set of request-and-response message exchanges between computers (the RPC exchange); and the single message from an RPC exchange (the RPC message).  For more information, see [C706].

Representational State Transfer (REST): A class of web services that is used to transfer domain-specific data by using HTTP, without additional messaging layers or session tracking, and returns textual data, such as XML.

schema: The set of attributes and object classes that govern the creation and update of objects.

security identifier (SID): An identifier for security principals that is used to identify an account or a group. Conceptually, the SID is composed of an account authority portion (typically a domain) and a smaller integer representing an identity relative to the account authority, termed the relative identifier (RID). The SID format is specified in [MS-DTYP] section 2.4.2; a string representation of SIDs is specified in [MS-DTYP] section 2.4.2 and [MS-AZOD] section 1.1.1.2.

SOAP: A lightweight protocol for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. SOAP uses XML technologies to define an extensible messaging framework, which provides a message construct that can be exchanged over a variety of underlying protocols. The framework has been designed to be independent of any particular programming model and other implementation-specific semantics. SOAP 1.2 supersedes SOAP 1.1. See [SOAP1.2-1/2003].

Technical Account Manager (TAM): Technical Account Managers help Microsoft customers create and maintain efficient and stable business systems. TAMs partner with customers to help design customized services for hosted Microsoft environments, facilitate support services and resources, and provide technical information to IT staff.

technical area: A broad categorization of the interoperability technologies that are addressed by the documents of the Windows protocols documentation set (see section 2.0).

technology collection: A technology overview and the technical specifications it references (see section 1.3.2).

terminal server: A computer on which terminal services is running.

terminal services (TS): A service on a server computer that allows delivery of applications, or the desktop itself, to various computing devices. When a user runs an application on a terminal server, the application execution takes place on the server computer and only keyboard, mouse, and display information is transmitted over the network. Each user sees only his or her individual session, which is managed transparently by the server operating system and is independent of any other client session.

transaction: In OleTx, an atomic transaction.

Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium that represents almost all of the written languages of the world. The Unicode standard [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] provides three forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32) and seven schemes (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 BE, UTF-16 LE, UTF-32, UTF-32 LE, and UTF-32 BE).

Unicode string: A Unicode 8-bit string is an ordered sequence of 8-bit units, a Unicode 16-bit string is an ordered sequence of 16-bit code units, and a Unicode 32-bit string is an ordered sequence of 32-bit code units. In some cases, it could be acceptable not to terminate with a terminating null character. Unless otherwise specified, all Unicode strings follow the UTF-16LE encoding scheme with no Byte Order Mark (BOM).

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): A string that identifies a resource. The URI is an addressing mechanism defined in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax [RFC3986].

UTF-16: A standard for encoding Unicode characters, defined in the Unicode standard, in which the most commonly used characters are defined as double-byte characters. Unless specified otherwise, this term refers to the UTF-16 encoding form specified in [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] section 3.9.

Web Services Description Language (WSDL): An XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints that operate on messages that contain either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. The operations and messages are described abstractly and are bound to a concrete network protocol and message format in order to define an endpoint. Related concrete endpoints are combined into abstract endpoints, which describe a network service. WSDL is extensible, which allows the description of endpoints and their messages regardless of the message formats or network protocols that are used.

Windows registry: The Windows implementation of the registry.

WSDL message: An abstract, typed definition of the data that is communicated during a WSDL operation [WSDL]. Also, an element that describes the data being exchanged between web service providers and clients.

XML: The Extensible Markup Language, as described in [XML1.0].

XML schema definition (XSD): The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard language that is used in defining XML schemas. Schemas are useful for enforcing structure and constraining the types of data that can be used validly within other XML documents. XML schema definition refers to the fully specified and currently recommended standard for use in authoring XML schemas.

XSL Transformation (XSLT): A declarative, XML-based language that is used to present or transform XML data. It is designed for use as part of the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL).

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.