STPM ICT 958 key terms

The gap between people who have reliable access to computers, internet and the skills to use them, and those who do not, often linked to income, location, age or education.

The ability to find, evaluate, create and communicate information using digital devices and software, including basic operation skills and judgement about the reliability of online content.

Working from home or another remote location and connecting to the workplace through networks and collaboration tools instead of travelling to an office.

Designing, using and disposing of computing equipment in ways that reduce energy consumption, hazardous waste and environmental impact, for example by virtualising servers or recycling components.

Discarded electronic equipment such as old computers, phones and printers, which may contain toxic metals and must be recycled or disposed of under controlled procedures.

Legal rights protecting creations of the mind such as software code, designs, music and written works, covering areas like copyright, patents and trademarks.

Copying, distributing or using software without a valid licence or beyond the rights the licence grants, which infringes the developer's intellectual property.

A small, very fast memory placed between the processor and main memory that holds recently or frequently used instructions and data to reduce average access time.

A computer design in which program instructions and data share the same main memory and travel to the processor over a common bus, one instruction being fetched at a time.

The repeating sequence of fetch, decode and execute steps by which the control unit obtains an instruction from memory, interprets it and carries out the requested operation.

A small, high-speed storage location inside the processor, such as the program counter, accumulator or instruction register, used to hold data or addresses during execution.

The part of the processor that performs arithmetic operations such as addition and logical operations such as comparisons and Boolean AND, OR and NOT.

A technique that uses part of secondary storage as an extension of main memory, moving pages between disk and RAM so programs larger than physical memory can run.

Dividing main memory and programs into fixed-size blocks called pages and frames, so that pages can be loaded into any free frame and located through a page table.

A severe performance drop that occurs when virtual memory is overcommitted and the system spends most of its time swapping pages rather than executing useful instructions.

A database that stores data in tables of rows and columns and links tables through shared key values, with operations expressed in structured query language.

A column or combination of columns whose value uniquely identifies each row in a table and cannot be null or duplicated.

A column in one table whose values must match a primary key value in another table, used to enforce referential integrity between related tables.

A rule ensuring that every foreign key value refers to an existing primary key value, preventing orphan records when rows are inserted, updated or deleted.

The process of organising tables to reduce redundancy and avoid update anomalies, typically progressing through first, second and third normal forms.

Documentation describing each field in a database, including its name, data type, size, constraints and meaning, used to keep the design consistent.

A finite, unambiguous sequence of steps that solves a problem or performs a task, which can be expressed as pseudocode, a flowchart or program code.

A structured, English-like notation for expressing an algorithm independently of any programming language, using keywords such as IF, WHILE and REPEAT.

A diagram that represents an algorithm using standard symbols, such as parallelograms for input and output, rectangles for processes and diamonds for decisions.

A technique in which a procedure or function calls itself on a smaller version of the problem, requiring a base case to stop the calls.

A last-in-first-out data structure in which items are added and removed at the same end, used for expression evaluation, undo operations and managing subroutine calls.

A first-in-first-out data structure in which items are added at the rear and removed from the front, used for scheduling, buffering and breadth-first searching.

A searching algorithm that repeatedly halves a sorted list by comparing the target with the middle element, running in logarithmic time.

A procedure that arranges data in a defined order, such as bubble sort, insertion sort, quicksort or merge sort, differing in speed and memory use.

A seven-layer conceptual framework describing network functions from physical transmission up to application services, used to compare and design protocols.

The four-layer protocol suite actually used on the internet, comprising application, transport, internet and network access layers, with TCP and IP as core protocols.

A numeric label assigned to a device on a network so that packets can be routed to it, written as four decimal octets in IPv4 or eight hexadecimal groups in IPv6.

A 32-bit pattern that separates the network portion of an IPv4 address from the host portion, allowing a large network to be divided into smaller subnets.

A distributed naming service that translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses so browsers can reach the correct server.

A set of agreed rules governing how data is formatted, transmitted and acknowledged between devices, for example HTTP, SMTP or TCP.

A transmission method in which messages are split into packets that travel independently across shared routes and are reassembled at the destination.

A network device that forwards packets between different networks by examining destination addresses and choosing the best available path.

A method that reduces file size by permanently discarding detail the human eye or ear is unlikely to notice, commonly used for photographs and audio.

A method that reduces file size while allowing the original data to be restored exactly, used where every detail must be preserved, such as text and program files.

The amount of detail an image or display can show, usually expressed as the number of pixels across and down, such as 1920 by 1080.

The number of bits used to represent the colour of each pixel, determining how many distinct colours an image can contain.

A language of rules that controls the presentation of HTML documents, separating layout, colour and typography from content structure.

The markup language that defines the structure and content of web pages using elements such as headings, paragraphs, lists and links.

The address that identifies the location of a resource on the web, typically including the protocol, domain name and path to the file.

A web design approach that makes pages adapt their layout to different screen sizes and devices, often using flexible grids and media queries.

The process of converting readable data into ciphertext using a key so that only authorised parties can convert it back to its original form.

An encryption method in which the same secret key is used to encrypt and decrypt data, making key distribution the main practical challenge.

An encryption method using a pair of related keys, where the public key encrypts and the private key decrypts, solving the key distribution problem.

A value created with a sender's private key that a receiver can verify with the public key, confirming the message's origin and that it was not altered.

A social engineering attack that tricks users into revealing passwords or financial details through fraudulent emails, messages or look-alike websites.

Software written to cause harm or gain unauthorised access, including viruses, worms, trojans, ransomware and spyware.

Hardware or software that filters network traffic against a set of rules, blocking unauthorised connections while allowing approved ones.

The field of computing concerned with building systems that perform tasks associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, perception and language use.

A branch of artificial intelligence in which programs improve their performance on a task by learning patterns from data rather than following hand-written rules.

The labelled or unlabelled examples used to fit a machine learning model, whose quality and representativeness strongly affect the model's accuracy and fairness.

A network of everyday physical devices fitted with sensors and network connections that collect and exchange data, often with little or no human intervention.

The delivery of computing services such as storage, processing and software over the internet on demand, usually charged by usage and managed by a provider.

Running multiple simulated computer systems on one physical machine through a hypervisor, improving hardware use and allowing rapid provisioning.