> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://experience-digital-transform.gitbook.io/experience-digital-transformation/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://experience-digital-transform.gitbook.io/experience-digital-transformation/analytics/technical-specifications/3.-terminology.md). # 3. Terminology Glossary of terms and abbreviations used throughout the Analytics Building Block Technical Specification. The table below defines the terms and abbreviations used throughout this specification, for quick reference. {% hint style="info" %} 📖 **26 terms, one page.** Use your browser's find (Ctrl/Cmd+F) to jump straight to the one you need. {% endhint %} | Term | Description | | --------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Analytics Building Block (Analytics BB) | The Building Block that provides data storage, transformation, analysis, and visualisation capabilities for governments, as defined in this specification. | | Data Lakehouse | A unified data architecture combining the scalability and low cost of a Data Lake with the data management and ACID transaction capabilities of a Data Warehouse. | | Data warehouse | A centralized repository that collects, integrates, and stores large volumes of data from multiple disparate sources. Designed specifically to support query execution, data analysis, and business intelligence (BI) reporting, it enables organizations to transform raw operational data into actionable strategic insights. | | Bronze / Silver / Gold Layer | The raw immutable archive (Bronze), the harmonised, cleaned and reconciled source of truth or "Golden Records" (Silver), and the pre-aggregated, use-case-specific data marts optimised for dashboards and reporting (Gold). | | ACID | Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability — the set of transaction properties that guarantee reliable, consistent writes to the lakehouse tables. | | MPP | Massively Parallel Processing — a query-execution model that distributes a single query across many compute nodes for high-throughput analytics over large datasets. | | PII | Personally Identifiable Information — any data that can identify an individual. PII is pseudonymised by upstream layers before it enters the Analytics BB; for climate and environmental datasets PII is typically absent. | | MLOps | Machine Learning Operations — practices that automate the lifecycle of machine-learning models from training through deployment and monitoring. | | RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) | An AI architecture that grounds Large Language Model outputs in a structured knowledge base retrieved at inference time, reducing hallucination risk. | | RBAC / ABAC / PBAC | Role-, Attribute-, and Policy-Based Access Control — complementary access-control models enforced at the query-execution layer (by role, by subject/resource/action attributes, and by explicit policy rules respectively). | | AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) | A tree representation of the syntactic structure of a query, used here for security enforcement before execution. | | CDC (Change Data Capture) | A technique for detecting and capturing changes in source databases for downstream processing. Handled upstream of this Building Block. | | OLAP | Online Analytical Processing — software for high-performance multi-dimensional analysis of large datasets. | | OLTP | Online Transaction Processing – a class of software systems designed to manage and execute high-frequency, real-time operational transactions. It serves as the day-to-day "operational engine" of an organization's applications, prioritizing rapid response times, high availability, and data integrity. | | SSO (Single Sign-On) | A federated authentication mechanism allowing platform users (public officials) to authenticate once across multiple government information systems. | | ETL / ELT | Extract, Transform, Load / Extract, Load, Transform — data-pipeline patterns for moving and reshaping data between systems. | | GitOps / IaC | Infrastructure as Code managed through version-controlled declarative configurations, ensuring reproducible deployments. | | Data steward | An operational or domain expert appointed by the Data Owner to manage, maintain, and safeguard data assets on a day-to-day basis. | | Data owner | A senior leader or business executive who holds ultimate accountability and decision-making authority over a specific set of data assets within their business domain. | | RPO / RTO | Recovery Point Objective / Recovery Time Objective — the maximum tolerable data loss and the maximum tolerable restoration time after an incident. | | Reconciliation | The process of comparing multiple estimates of the same quantity, quantifying and explaining the gap against an agreed threshold, and designating an authoritative value — rather than silently averaging divergent sources. | | Divergent evidence streams | Multiple sources for the same phenomenon (e.g. a national inventory and a satellite-derived estimate) that may legitimately produce different values and must be reconciled transparently. | | Governed human review | A step in which a designated steward or officer adjudicates a flagged reconciliation and records a logged, reversible decision; automated reconciliation defers to this review where required. | | Provenance / Lineage | The documented origin, transformation history and responsible actor for a data record, represented in an open vocabulary (e.g. W3C PROV-O) to support auditability and dispute handling. | | MRV / ETF | Measurement, Reporting and Verification, and the UNFCCC Enhanced Transparency Framework under which national climate data is reported. | | Geospatial / Earth observation | Vector and raster spatial datasets (including satellite imagery and derived signals), indexed and discoverable via a spatio-temporal catalogue (e.g. OGC STAC). | | Text-to-SQL | The process of converting natural-language queries into valid SQL statements, performed by an LLM-powered module with mandatory security enforcement. | | Availability Zone (AZ) | An isolated data-centre location within a cloud region, used to achieve geographic redundancy. | --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. 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