Glossary¶
Plain-language definitions of the terms used throughout the MVsharp documentation.
Tip
Terms such as TCL and VOC are underlined with a dotted line across the site. Hover over one to see its definition.
MultiValue concepts¶
- Account
- A self-contained MVsharp environment with its own VOC, file pointers and programs. It consists of a SQL Server database and a directory holding
Account.xmland the directory files. See Creating new accounts. - MultiValue (MV)
- A database model, used by UniVerse, UniData, jBASE and D3, in which a single field of a record can hold a list of values. MVsharp runs MultiValue applications on .NET.
- TCL
- Terminal Control Language. The MultiValue command prompt, shown as
>in the examples, where you run commands such asCREATE.ACCOUNTorLISTPTR. - VOC
- The vocabulary file. Every account has one, and it holds the commands, file pointers and other verbs available in that account.
- File pointer
- A VOC entry that tells MVsharp where a file lives: its data portion, its dictionary portion and its file type. See Structure of a VOC file pointer.
- Q-pointer
- A VOC entry that points to a file in another account, or on a remote system, so it can be used as if it were local. See Q pointers and remote files.
- Dictionary
- The part of a file that describes its fields: names, positions, conversions and, in MVsharp, the SQL data type used for indexing and views.
- D-type and I-type
- Dictionary item types. A D-type describes a stored field. An I-type is a calculated field defined by an expression. See A and S dictionaries vs D types and I types.
- Dynamic array
- The MV BASIC string type that holds a whole record, with fields separated by special delimiter characters. In .NET code it is the
DynamicArrayclass. - Cataloging
- Registering a compiled BASIC program so that it can be run or called by name from any program or from TCL.
- Trigger
- A cataloged BASIC subroutine that runs automatically before or after database I/O on a file: read, write, delete, open, close or clear. See Triggers.
Prosol products and tools¶
- MVsharp
- Prosol's platform for running MultiValue applications on .NET with SQL Server, Oracle or DB2 as the database. See MVsharp overview.
- Developers Edition
- A free, full-featured edition of MVsharp limited to a single CPU core and SQL Server Express. See Developers Edition.
- MVrest
- The Prosol product that publishes MV BASIC subroutines as REST services. See the MVrest documentation.
- MVsync
- The Prosol product that keeps SQL Server synchronized with MultiValue files and normalizes the data into SQL views. See the MVsync documentation.
- BasicRuntime
- The .NET assembly that implements the MV BASIC runtime. Call it from C#, Python or JavaScript. See Runtime API.