Reference & Manual > Glossary > O

OC-1, OC-3, OC-12, OC-24, OC-48
Optical Carrier transmission speeds, used in fiber optic networks conforming to SONET standard. OC-1 is 51.85 Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed.

ODBC Support
Object Database Connectivity (ODBC) support allows ODBC compliant applications to connect to an ODBC database and extract data without requiring that the user have programming skills. For example, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and MySQL are ODBC compliant applications. Using ODBC and mySQL a user can import data directly into an Excel spreadsheet once MySQL ODBC drivers have been installed on the user's computer.

Offline
Opposite of Online. Used to describe a state of not being actively connected to the Internet. When you collect your email and log-off to read it, you are browsing your email 'offline'.

Online
Term used to describe being actively connected to the Internet. You are probably online right now reading this glossary. Can also be used in the context of having the capability to connect to the Internet, i.e.; Can you go online?

Open Source
A computer program where the underlying code is made available to the public is referred to as 'open source'.
With the networking of computers enabled by the internet, what computer programs 'are doing' has become a cause for concern. Open source programs address this by making the program code available for general inspection. A significant byproduct of this transparency is the ability for programmers to actively contribute to the continued development of a shared code library.

Operating System
A software heart of the computer. It is a set of programs that manage the hardware resources of a computer, provide the environment for application programs to run and provide the user interface. Most known operating systems are: different flavors of Unix (SunOs, HP-UX, Irix, FreeBSD, Linux,...), MacOS and Windows.

OSI
(Open System Interconnection). A network standard developed by ISO and CCITT. It describes the way in which protocols of different layers communicate. This enables machines of different vendors to communicate over the network.