Active Scripting
Active Scripting controls the integrated behavior of several ActiveX controls and/or Java applets from the server or the browser. Active Scripting is made possible by plugging a scripting engine into a host application. The scripting engine enables the processing of a specific scripting language, such as Visual Basic Scripting Edition or JScript

Active Server Pages (ASP, PHP )
An Active Server Page (ASP) is an HTML page that includes one or more scripts (small embedded programs) that are processed on a Microsoft Web server before the page is sent to the user. An ASP is somewhat similar to a server-side include or a common gateway interface (CGI) application in that all involve programs that run on the server, usually tailoring a page for the user. Typically, the script in the Web page at the server uses input received as the result of the user's request for the page to access data from a database and then builds or customizes the page on the fly before sending it to the requestor. ASP is a feature of the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), but, since the server-side script is just building a regular HTML page, it can be delivered to almost any browser

ActiveX
ActiveX is the name Microsoft has given to a set of "strategic" object-oriented program technologies and tools. The main technology is the Component Object Model (COM). Used in a network with a directory and additional support, COM becomes the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM). The main thing that you create when writing a program to run in the ActiveX environment is a component, a self-sufficient program that can be run anywhere in your ActiveX network (currently a network consisting of Windows and Macintosh systems). This component is known as an ActiveX control. ActiveX is Microsoft's answer to the Java technology from Sun Microsystems. An ActiveX control is roughly equivalent to a Java applet. Currently, ActiveX controls run in Windows 95/98/NT and in Macintosh. Microsoft plans to support ActiveX controls for UNIX

ActiveX Control
An ActiveX control is part of Microsoft's set of ActiveX technologies. An ActiveX control is a component program object that can be re-used by many application programs within a computer or among computers in a network. The technology for creating ActiveX controls is part of Microsoft's overall ActiveX set of technologies, chief of which is the Component Object Model (COM). ActiveX controls can be downloaded as small programs or animations for Web pages, but they can also be used for any commonly-needed task by an application program in the latest Windows and Macintosh environments. In general, ActiveX controls replace the earlier OCXs (Object Linking and Embedding custom controls). An ActiveX control is roughly equivalent in concept and implementation to the Java applet.

ActiveX Data Objects
ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) is an application program interface (API) from Microsoft that lets programmers writing Windows applications get access to relational and non-relational databases from both Microsoft and other database providers. For example, if you wanted to write a program that would provide users of your Web site with data from an IBM DB2 database or an Oracle database, you could include ADO program statements in an HTML file that you then identified as an Active Server Page (ASP). When a user requested the page from the Web site, the page sent back could include appropriate data from a database, obtained using ADO code. Like Microsoft's other system interfaces, ADO is an object-oriented interface.

ActiveXFS
ActiveXFS is the industry leading Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) based on OPEN connectivity standard. This technology provides the support for both attended and unattended (self-service) retail banking peripherals. Structured around and in support of the extensions for Financial Services (XFS) open standard, ActiveXFS extends XFS to a higher level of worldwide industry recognition. For example, ActiveXFS allows a single Retail Banking application to run in a setting of many hardware vendors, therefore providing crucial support for retail banking peripherals.

Bandwidth
The bandwidth of a transmitted communications signal is a measure of the range of frequencies the signal occupies. The term is also used in reference to the frequency-response characteristics of a communications receiving system. All transmitted signals, whether analog or digital, have a certain bandwidth. The same is true of receiving systems. Generally speaking, bandwidth is directly proportional to the amount of data transmitted or received per unit time.

Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a new technology for wireless connectivity. This technology allows wireless communication to take place between kiosks and other related devices. Bluetooth does not require a line-of-sight connection in order to establish the communication because the technology uses common, unlicensed frequencies of radio band normally used by high-speed wireless local area networks (LANs) and bar-code scanning devices.

Browser
A browser is an application program that provides a way to look at and interact with all the information on the World Wide Web. The word "browser" seems to have originated prior to the Web as a generic term for user interfaces that let you browse text files online. By the time the first Web browser with a graphical user interface was invented (Mosaic, in 1992), the term seemed to apply to Web content, too. Technically, a Web browser is a client program that uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to make requests of Web servers throughout the Internet on behalf of the browser user.

CGI scripts
The common gateway interface (CGI) is a standard way for a Web server to pass a Web user's request to an application program and to receive data back to forward to the user. When the user requests a Web page (for example, by clicking on a highlighted word or entering a Web site address), the server sends back the requested page. However, when a user fills out a form on a Web page and sends it in, it usually needs to be processed by an application program. The Web server typically passes the form information to a small application program that processes the data and may send back a confirmation message.

Client
A client is the requesting program or user in a client/server relationship. For example, the user of a Web browser is effectively making client requests for pages from servers all over the Web. The browser itself is a client in its relationship with the computer that is getting and returning the requested HTML file. The computer handling the request and sending back the HTML file is a server.

Client/Server
Client/server describes the relationship between two computer programs in which one program, the client, makes a service request from another program, the server, which fulfills the request. Although the client/server idea can be used by programs within a single computer, it is a more important idea in a network. In a network, the client/server model provides a convenient way to interconnect programs that are distributed efficiently across different locations. Computer transactions using the client/server model are very common. For example, to check your bank account from your computer, a client program in your computer forwards your request to a server program at the bank. That program may in turn forward the request to its own client program that sends a request to a database server at another bank computer to retrieve your account balance. The balance is returned back to the bank data client, which in turn serves it back to the client in your personal computer, which displays the information for you. The client/server model has become one of the central ideas of network computing. Most business applications being written today use the client/server model. So does the Internet's main program, TCP/IP.

COM
COM (Component Object Model) is Microsoft's framework for developing and supporting program component objects. It is aimed at providing similar capabilities to those defined in CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), a framework for the interoperation of distributed objects in a network that is supported by other major companies in the computer industry. COM provides the underlying services of interface negotiation, life cycle management (determining when an object can be removed from a system), licensing, and event services (putting one object into service as the result of an event that has happened to another object). COM includes COM+, DCOM, and ActiveX interfaces and programming tools.

DCOM
DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) is a set of Microsoft concepts and program interfaces in which client program objects can request services from server program objects on other computers in a network. DCOM is based on the Component Object Model (COM), which provides a set of interfaces allowing clients and servers to communicate within the same computer (that is running Windows 95 or a later version).

DHTML
Dynamic HTML is a collective term for a combination of new Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags and options, style sheets, and programming that will let you create Web pages more animated and more responsive to user interaction than previous versions of HTML. Much of dynamic HTML is specified in HTML 4.0. Simple examples of dynamic HTML pages would include (1) having the color of a text heading change when a user passes a mouse over it or (2) allowing a user to "drag and drop" an image to another place on a Web page. Dynamic HTML can allow Web documents to look and act like desktop applications or multimedia productions.

Distributed Managed Device (DMD)
DMD is a computer device that can be controlled or managed from a remote location over the web. Examples of DMD devices are: firewalls, net cameras, servers and DMD kiosks. A DMD kiosk is more than a kiosk because you can do more things with it. Eventually all devices will be remote controlled over the web.

DMZ
DMZ is a public internal network typically used exclusively for servers that are accessed by external clients on the Internet, such as Web, FTP and E-Mail servers. By placing these public access servers on a separate isolated network, you provide an extra measure of security for your internal network, as well as increasing its network throughput since external traffic no longer appears on your internal network.

Flash
Flash is the industry's most advanced authoring environment for creating interactive websites, digital experiences and mobile content.

Firewall
The term firewall, in computer jargon, has the same connotation as it would in relation to your house or car. It provides protection against anything that has the ability to destroy your property. In relation to your car and house it protects against fires and in networking it provides protection against attacks on your network or computer. Network firewalls can serve several purposes. They act as a gateway providing access for your network to multiple networks or to the Internet. They can also block traffic flowing to and from the network. They have the ability to choose what is and what is not allowed to flow in and out of the network. The firewall's ability to decide what is and what is not allowed are configurations that are setup by the system administrator as policies or rules. These policies define what traffic the firewall will or will not allow to enter the network. They also define what is allowed to or not allowed to leave the network. These policies are the heart of a firewall.

HTML
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the set of "markup" symbols or codes inserted in a file intended for display on a World Wide Web browser. The markup tells the Web browser how to display a Web page's words and images for the user. The individual markup codes are referred to as elements (but many people also refer to them as tags). HTML is a standard recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and adhered to by the major browsers, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator, which also provide some additional non-standard codes.

Kiosk
In information technology, a kiosk is a small physical structure (often including a computer and a display screen) that displays information for people walking by. Kiosks are common near the entrances of shopping malls where they provide shoppers with directions. Kiosks are also used at trade shows and professional conferences. The word is of Turkish and earlier Persian origin, where it meant an outdoor pavilion or a portico.

LAN
A LAN is a network of interconnected workstations sharing the resources of a single processor or server within a relatively small geographic area. Typically, this might be within the area of a small office building. However, FDDI extends a local area network over a much wider area. Usually, the server has applications and data storage that are shared in common by multiple workstation users. A local area network may serve as few as four or five users or, in the case of FDDI, may serve several thousand.

Multi-Tier Architecture
In general, a tier (pronounced TEE-er; from the medieval French tire meaning rank, as in a line of soldiers) is a row or layer in a series of similarly arranged objects. In computer programming, the parts of a program can be distributed among several tiers, each located in a different computer in a network. Such a program is said to be tiered, multi-tier, or multi-tiered.

MYSQL
Not only is MySQL the world's most popular open source database, it's also become the database of choice for a new generation of applications built on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl / Python.) MySQL runs on more than 20 platforms including Linux, Windows, OS/X, HP-UX, AIX, Netware, giving you the kind of flexibility that puts you in control.

NAT
Network Address Translation (NAT) is the translation of an IP address used within one network to a different IP address known within another network.

OPOS
OLE for Retail POS (point-of-sale) creates a sophisticated setting that allows retailers to choose the best POS hardware peripherals and object-oriented software applications and set them up across a variety of hardware platforms, while the retailer's investment in application software is protected. OPOS has three main components: a programming interface specification, a set of APIs (Application Programming Interface) that take advantage of the standard device driver model, and registry services of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

What is PHP?
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.

Push model
Push" (or "server-push") is the delivery of information on the Web that appears to be initiated by the information server rather than by the information user or client, as it usually is.

Server
1) In general, a server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs in the same or other computers.
2) The computer that a server program runs in is also frequently referred to as a server (though it may contain a number of server and client programs).
3) In the client/server programming model, a server is a program that awaits and fulfills requests from client programs in the same or other computers. A given application in a computer may function as a client with requests for services from other programs and a server of requests from other programs. Specific to the Web, a Web server is the computer program (housed in a computer) that serves requested HTML pages or files. A Web client is the requesting program associated with the user. The Web browser in your computer is a client that requests HTML files from Web servers.

SQL
SQL (Structured Query Language) is a standard interactive and programming language for getting information from and updating a database. Although SQL is both an ANSI and an ISO standard, many database products support SQL with proprietary extensions to the standard language. Queries take the form of a command language that lets you select, insert, update, find out the location of data, and so forth. There is also a programming interface.

TCP/IP
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is the basic communication language or protocol of the Internet. It can also be used as a communications protocol in the private networks called intranets and in extranets. When you are set up with direct access to the Internet, your computer is provided with a copy of the TCP/IP program just as every other computer that you may send messages to or get information from also has a copy of TCP/IP. TCP/IP is a two-layered program. The higher layer, Transmission Control Protocol, manages the assembling of a message or file into smaller packets that are transmitted over the Internet and received by a TCP layer that reassembles the packets into the original message. The lower layer, Internet Protocol, handles the address part of each packet so that it gets to the right destination. Each gateway computer on the network checks this address to see where to forward the message. Even though some packets from the same message are routed differently than others, they'll be reassembled at the destination.

Thick client
A thick client is a software application that stores the majority of content and functionality on the local hard drive. An example is high quality video that is stored on the local computer where it can be played instantly on-screen instead of being accessed through an on-line connection, which normally causes some waiting time. The benefit of a thick client is that content that is viewed many times without being changed only needs to be uploaded once and stored instead of being downloaded every time it is viewed. By using a thick-client it is possible to view videos and other content that is larger than the available bandwidth is able to deliver within acceptable time.
The opposite of a thick-client is thin-client that only displays information. A typical thin-client is an Internet browser that is set to store no information in its cache memory.

WAN
A WAN (wide area network) is a geographically dispersed telecommunications network and the term distinguishes a broader telecommunication structure from a local area network (LAN). A wide area network may be privately owned or rented, but the term usually connotes the inclusion of public (shared user) networks. An intermediate form of network in terms of geography is a metropolitan area network (MAN).

XFS
XFS is an extension of WOSA (Windows Open Service Architecture) and stands for Extensions for Financial Services. This technology supports important peripherals for kiosk applications, such as deposit units, cash dispenser modules, identification cards, PIN pads, cameras, sensors and indicator units, and a wide variety of printing mechanisms.

XML
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere. For example, computer makers might agree on a standard or common way to describe the information about a computer product (processor speed, memory size, and so forth) and then describe the product information format with XML. Such a standard way of describing data would enable a user to send an intelligent agent (a program) to each computer maker's Web site, gather data, and then make a valid comparison. XML can be used by any individual or group of individuals or companies that wants to share information in a consistent way. XML is "extensible" because, unlike HTML, the markup symbols are unlimited and self-defining.