---
type: Concept
title: Glossary
description: This glossary includes terms that are often used when using ScalarDL.
resource: https://scalardl.scalar-labs.com/docs/3.12/glossary/
tags:
- scalardl
- v3.12
- phase:design
- section:about-scalardl
- edition:community
- edition:enterprise
status: stable
product: scalardl
product_title: ScalarDL
version: '3.12'
patch_version: 3.12.3
doc_id: glossary
lifecycle_phase: design
breadcrumb:
- About ScalarDL
editions:
- Community
- Enterprise
generated:
  by: process:okf-build/1.0.0
  at: '2026-08-04T23:51:01Z'
sources:
- id: docs-scalardl
  resource: https://github.com/scalar-labs/docs-scalardl/blob/c1dbc91f4c36ec4ce63e7181302c89b7b6669e62/versioned_docs/version-3.12/glossary.mdx
  title: ScalarDL documentation source (MDX)
  author: process:scalar-labs/docs-scalardl
  last_modified: '2026-08-04T15:05:14Z'
---

# Glossary

This glossary includes terms that are often used when using ScalarDL.

## Security terms

The following are security terms.

### administrative domain

An administrative domain is a boundary within which entities or systems are governed by the same administrative authorities, allowing for controlled data and resource management.

### authenticity

Authenticity is the assurance that data, messages, or transactions originate from verified sources, preventing impersonation or forgery.

### blockchain

A blockchain is a distributed-ledger technology where data is recorded in blocks and linked together in a chain, ensuring transparency, immutability, and security.

### Byzantine fault

A Byzantine fault refers to an arbitrary fault regardless of maliciousness, such as software bugs and data tampering, posing a challenge to maintaining consistency in distributed systems.

### Byzantine-fault detection

Byzantine-fault detection is the process of identifying nodes that exhibit Byzantine faults in a distributed system, supporting system reliability by flagging potential threats.

### Byzantine-fault tolerance

Byzantine-fault tolerance is a system's ability to continue functioning correctly even when some nodes act maliciously or inconsistently, often through consensus mechanisms.

### CA

A certificate authority (CA) is a trusted entity that issues digital certificates to verify the identity of organizations and individuals, ensuring secure communication through public key infrastructure (PKI).

### certificate

A certificate is a digital document that verifies the identity of an entity by using cryptographic signatures, ensuring secure communication and trust.

### digital signature

A digital signature is a cryptographic technique that verifies the authenticity and integrity of a message or document, confirming it was created by a known sender and having the non-repudiation property.

### ECDSA

Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is a cryptographic algorithm that uses elliptic curve mathematics to create digital signatures, providing strong security with shorter key lengths compared to RSA.

### HMAC

HMAC (hash-based message authentication code) is a cryptographic function that ensures data integrity and authenticity by hashing the data along with a secret key. Unlike a digital signature, HMAC does not have the non-repudiation property.

### ledger database

A ledger database is a tamper-evident, verifiable database that records data in a sequential manner, supporting traceability and verification, often with cryptographic proof for integrity.

### private key

A private key is a secret cryptographic key used to sign or decrypt data, ensuring secure and authorized access.

### public key

A public key is a cryptographic key shared publicly that enables users to encrypt messages or verify digital signatures, often paired with a private key for secure communication.

### RSA

RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) is an asymmetric cryptographic algorithm that uses the difficulty of factoring large prime numbers to enable secure data transmission, digital signatures, and key exchange.

### smart contract

A smart contract is a computer program that automatically enforces and verifies rules, terms, or conditions, typically used in ledger and blockchain systems.

### tamper evidence

Tamper evidence ensures the detection of unauthorized modifications of digital data, typically through secure data management systems like ledger databases and blockchains.

### TLS

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol that ensures privacy and data integrity between client-server applications over the internet, replacing its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

## Database and distributed-system terms

The following are database and distributed-system terms.

### ACID

Atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) is a set of properties that ensure database transactions are processed reliably, maintaining integrity even in cases of errors or system failures.

### concurrency control

Concurrency control in databases ensures that multiple transactions can occur simultaneously without causing data inconsistency, usually through mechanisms like locking or timestamp ordering.

### consensus

Consensus in distributed systems refers to the process of achieving agreement among multiple computers or nodes on a single data value or system state.

### linearizability

Linearizability is a strong consistency model in distributed systems where operations appear to occur atomically in some order consistent with real-time ordering, and each operation takes effect between its start and end.

### Paxos

Paxos is a family of protocols used in distributed systems to achieve consensus, even in the presence of node failures.

### PITR

Point-in-time recovery (PITR) allows a database to be restored to a previous state at any specific time, usually after an unintended event like data corruption.

### read-committed isolation

Read-committed isolation is an isolation level where each transaction sees only committed data, preventing dirty reads but allowing non-repeatable reads.

### serializable isolation

Serializable isolation (serializability) is the highest isolation level in transactional systems, ensuring that the outcome of concurrently executed transactions is the same as if they were executed sequentially.

### snapshot isolation

Snapshot isolation is an isolation level that allows transactions to read a consistent snapshot of the database, protecting them from seeing changes made by other transactions until they complete.

### transaction

A transaction in databases is a sequence of operations treated as a single logical unit of work, ensuring consistency and integrity, typically conforming to ACID properties.

### two-phase locking

Two-phase locking is a concurrency control protocol that enforces serializability by acquiring all required locks before releasing any, in two distinct phases.
