| Field | Either an attribute, or a column of attributes |
| Tuple | All fields in one table associated with a single item. A "row" of a table. |
| Record | See tuple. |
| Relation | A set of records with identical structure. A "table". |
| Metadata | A description of every table and the associated fields. |
| Index | A data structure that speeds access when searching, but does not change the semantic content of the database. |
| BLOB | A Binary Large Object. |
| Key | A field or set of fields that is unique for each record. For example, social security number is a key for people, and birthday is not. |
| Projection | To choose only certain fields of a table. |
| Selection | To choose only certain records of a table. |
| Join | To produce a new table that is the Cartesian product of the two tables. To "multiply" two tables. |
| Scheme | A set of table descriptions that describe the database. Just like metadata but without the field types. |
| Consistent | The database describes the real world as intended. |
| Decomposition | To break a single table into multiple tables. |
| Database | A set of tables |
| Transaction | The unit of work in a database. |
| Commit | Make the transaction's changes permement |
| Abort | Erase the transaction's changes |
| Lock | Rights to a data item that preclude other's from that data item |
| Deadlock | A set of transactions that will wait forever on each other because of conflicting locks. |
| SQL | The Structured Query Language |
| Oracle | The most popular commercial database |
| DB2 | The other most popular commercial database |
| mSQL | Our database software |
| Lite | The langauge we will use to access the mSQL database. |