GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Daisy Wheel:

An older style of printer that places typewriter characters on to the paper utilizing a `daisy wheel' print head. This was an oblate, spherical ball that rotated to the appropriate letter before being pressed into contact with a ribbon and thence to the page.

Data:

Pronouced "day-tah", it is the information stored in a computer in memory or on a disc, or on any storage device from magnetic tape to flash drives.

Database:

A collection of information that pertains to a particular entity, topic, or group of people or objects with something in common. A database can be illustrated by a table in which each row contains all of the information relating to a given entity and each column containing one specific piece of information about that entity. This is a spreadsheet style of database.

Another type is represented by a series of disconnected fields of which each one contains a specific piece of information. So for a personal database, there might be fields for `Name', `Address', `City', `Province', `Phone Number' and so on. The user can specify a sort or search by using any given field as an input criteria.

Default Drive:

The current drive. The drive on which the user currently is. This is also the physical drive looked at by the operating system or its program if no drive has been specified.

DIR:

An internal DOS command that displays a listing of files to the screen.

Directory:

A section of a disk where a user places groups of related files. Also referred to as a `folder'.

Disc or Disk:

The medium on which data is stored. Can include optical discs such as DVD and CD-ROMs, as well as zip, hard and floppy discs. Floppy discs are also known as `diskettes'.

Disk Drive:

The device that allows a floppy disc to be read or written to.

DOS:

Disc Operating System. A program that controls how software works with hardware. Although MS-DOS is the best known, other systems such as Apple also have used the acronym.

DOS continues to be used today in embedded systems and also as a modern operating system. It has been updated for the 21st century in the guise of DR-DOS and FreeDOS, among others.

DOS Prompt:

An indicator at the start of the command line in the DOS operating system that typically shows the current drive and directory. ( i.e. C:\DOS )

Dot Matrix:

A printing device that forms letters and numbers by rows and columns of pins. The number of pins on the print head determine how many dots are used to form each character. Mostly taken over today by ink jet, laser, and heat printers, but still may be seen in point-of-sale locations especially when multiple copies are required.

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