Loading...
Plain-language definitions of the terms you keep hearing. No jargon, no gatekeeping. Each one is a short answer you can actually use.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a defined way for two software systems to talk to each other. It is the contract that lets your apps share data automatically instead of through manual copy-paste.
A bill of materials (BOM) is the complete list of raw materials, parts, and quantities needed to make a product. It is the recipe that lets a manufacturer cost, plan, and purchase accurately.
Cloud hosting means running your software and data on a provider's on-demand data centers instead of your own servers, so capacity can scale up or down as needed and you never maintain the hardware.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is one connected system that runs the core of a business, quoting, orders, production, inventory, purchasing, and invoicing, so every department works from the same live data.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical devices, sensors, machines, and meters, that collect and share data over the internet, letting a business measure the real world automatically instead of by hand.
A large language model (LLM) is an AI system trained on vast amounts of text to predict and generate language, which lets it write, summarize, answer questions, and hold a conversation. ChatGPT and Claude are powered by LLMs.
Multi-tenancy is a software design where many customer organizations (tenants) share one running application while each tenant's data stays private and isolated. It is the arrangement that makes SaaS affordable.
A primary key is a column whose value uniquely identifies each row in a database table, like a customer number, so records can be referenced reliably and never confused with one another.
A relational database stores data in linked tables of rows and columns, using shared keys to keep information consistent and to answer questions that reach across the whole dataset.
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) improves AI accuracy by finding relevant passages from your own trusted documents and handing them to a language model at question time, so it answers from real data instead of memory.
Row-level security (RLS) is a database feature that controls which rows each user can see or change, enforcing data privacy at the deepest level. It is essential for keeping tenants isolated in shared SaaS applications.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is software you reach over the internet for a subscription, with the provider handling hosting, security, backups, and updates, instead of you installing and maintaining it yourself.
