Today I learned that cool people “in the know” about SharePoint don’t say “Global Assembly Cache;” they just called it the “GAC,” or the “gack.” My more knowledgeable coworkers joked that this mistake would make a good blog post. I laughed along with them, and then in private, I wrote myself a reminder to actually blog about it.

Part of fitting in is using the correct lingo, right? If I can save someone else from making the same goof, then sharing my misstep with the world is worth it.

So with that in mind, here’s the second installment of my Beginner’s Guide to SharePoint Vocabulary blog posts. As always, feel free to let me know if I haven’t explained something well or if I got a definition wrong. It keeps me humble.

Application Pool: A group of URLs that define a set of Web applications that are sharing one or more worker processes. Application pools are an easy way to administer a set of Web sites and Web applications and the processes of each. Application pools help improve the reliability and manageability of a Web infrastructure. They are managed in the IIS (Internet Information Services) manager.

Assembly: In the .NET framework, an assembly is a partially compiled code library that’s used in deployment, versioning, and security. Assemblies come in two forms: process assemblies (.exe) and library assemblies (.dll). Assemblies can contain more than one file or code module.

CAML, or Collaborative Application Markup Language: An XML-based markup language that’s used in SharePoint. It contains specific tags that define and display data, sites, and lists. It is case-sensitive.

Code Library: A collection of code that provides services to specific programs or operating systems.

Code Module: A file containing instructions in code.

Deploy: Installing and running a product or program.

DLL, or Dynamic-Link Library: An executable program module in Windows. At runtime, a DLL performs one or several functions.

DWP: The file extension for a Web Part.

MOSS 2007, or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: MOSS 2007 uses the services in WSS, but it also adds its own services, creating applications such as Business Intelligence, People and Personalization, Enterprise Content Management, and Portals.

REST, or Representational State Transfer: An XML-based protocol for calling Web services over HTTP.

SOAP, or Simple Object Access Protocol: Another XML-based protocol, SOAP is message-based and accesses services on the Web. It uses HTTP to send text commands across the Internet.

Versioning: When a software product is upgraded or improved, it gets a new name or a number assigned to that version of the product to help identify which version it is. So if you have a product called the Data Compiler, the original version is named 1.0, and minor versions of the product are 1.3, 1.5, and 1.8, while a major version is called 2.0.

Worker Process: Microsoft uses this term to describe a windows process that runs Web applications. The process also handles requests sent to a Web server about a specific application pool.

 

Read the entire Beginner’s Guide to SharePoint Vocabulary series:

• A Beginner’s Guide to SharePoint Vocabulary: Part 1
• A Beginner’s Guide to SharePoint Vocabulary: Part 2
• A Beginner’s Guide to SharePoint Vocabulary: Part 3
• A Beginner’s Guide to SharePoint Vocabulary: Part 4
• A Beginner’s Guide to SharePoint Vocabulary: Part 5