IT Glossary
Key Terms To Know In The IT Industry

Logical Bomb

A piece of code intentionally inserted into a software system that will set off a malicious function when specified conditions are met.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity

Logical Clocks

An algorithm for generating a sequence of timestamps in distributed systems to order events and ensure data consistency without relying on synchronized physical clocks. Logical clocks are crucial in the coordination of distributed systems.

You will find this term commonly used in Distributed Systems, Algorithms

Logical Consistency

A property of distributed systems that ensures all nodes in the system appear to operate in a coherent and consistent manner, despite the possibility of failures or the distributed nature of the system.

You will find this term commonly used in Distributed Systems, Data Management

Logical Data Model

An abstract model that organizes data elements and standardizes how the data elements relate to one another.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Management

Logical Data Recovery

The process of retrieving data lost due to logical errors, such as file corruption, accidental deletion, or formatting, without the need to repair physical damage to the storage media. It often involves file system repair and data extraction techniques.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Recovery, IT Services

Logical Deduction

The process of reasoning from one or more statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion. It's used in programming, particularly in algorithms that involve decision making, and in proving correctness of algorithms.

You will find this term commonly used in Algorithms, Programming

Logical Drive

A partition on a physical storage device that the operating system can manage and access as if it were a physical drive. Logical drives are used to organize and manage data storage more efficiently.

You will find this term commonly used in Storage, Operating Systems

Logical Inference

The process of deriving new logical statements from existing statements through the application of logical rules. It's fundamental in automated reasoning, artificial intelligence, and the development of expert systems.

You will find this term commonly used in Artificial Intelligence

Logical Network Design

A part of network design that precedes the physical implementation, focusing on high-level design aspects such as IP addressing schemes, routing protocols, and network services without dictating specific hardware and connections.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

Logical Operator

An operator that returns a boolean result based on the boolean result of one or two other expressions.

You will find this term commonly used in Programming

Logical Operators in Programming

Operators used in programming to perform logical operations, such as AND, OR, and NOT, on boolean values. They are fundamental in conditional statements and loops to control the flow of programs based on conditions.

You will find this term commonly used in Programming

Logical Partition

A division of a computer's hard disk into separate and independent virtual disks.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Hardware

Logical Partitioning (LPAR)

A method of subdividing a computer's hardware resources into multiple sets of logical systems, each capable of running its own operating system and applications. It is used in mainframes and some high-end servers for resource isolation and maximization.

You will find this term commonly used in Virtualization, System Administration

Logical Topology

Logical topology refers to the way data is transmitted between nodes in a network regardless of the physical layout.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

Logical Volume

A logical volume is a virtual storage device created by combining multiple physical storage devices such as disks or partitions.

You will find this term commonly used in Storage

Logical Volume Management (LVM)

A device mapper framework that provides logical volume management for the Linux kernel.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Storage

Login

The process by which an individual gains access to a computer system by identifying and authenticating themselves.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, General IT

Logistics Management System

A software system designed for managing the storage and transportation of goods.

You will find this term commonly used in Supply Chain Management

Long Polling

A web application development pattern used to emulate pushing data from server to client.

You will find this term commonly used in Web Development

Long Range (LoRa)

A low-power wide-area network protocol designed for wireless battery-operated things in a regional, national, or global network. LoRa enables long-range transmissions with low power consumption, making it ideal for IoT devices.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, IoT

Long-Polling

A web development technique that allows servers to push information to a client once available, by maintaining an open connection until the response is ready. It's used to create near real-time applications without using WebSockets.

You will find this term commonly used in Web Development

Long-Term Storage

Long-term storage refers to storage solutions designed for the retention of data over extended periods, typically months or years.

You will find this term commonly used in Storage

Longitudinal Data Analysis

The analysis of data collected from the same subjects over a period of time to observe changes. In IT, it's often applied in user behavior studies, system performance monitoring over time, or tracking the evolution of software projects.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Analysis, Research

Longitudinal Study

A research design that involves repeated observations of the same variables (e.g., people) over short or long periods of time. In IT, it can refer to studies observing the long-term effects or trends in technology use or development.

You will find this term commonly used in Research, Data Analysis

Longitudinal Wave

A wave in which the movement of the medium's particles is parallel to the direction of the wave's travel. While more a physics concept, it's relevant in IT for understanding aspects of sound transmission and networking in physical media.

You will find this term commonly used in Physics, Networking

Lookup

A lookup operation involves searching for a specific piece of information, such as a key or value, within a data structure or database.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Management

Lookup Table

A lookup table is a data structure that maps keys to values for efficient retrieval of information.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Structures

Loop (Programming)

A sequence of instruction s that is continually repeated until a certain condition is reached.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Software Development

Loop Control Structure

In programming, constructs that allow for the execution of a block of code multiple times under certain conditions. Common loop control structures include for, while, and do-while loops, each with different use cases and behaviors.

You will find this term commonly used in Programming, Software Development

Loop Device

A virtual device that maps a file onto a block device, allowing the file to be accessed as if it were a physical disk. This can be used for mounting disk images and creating virtual filesystems within a single file.

You will find this term commonly used in Operating Systems

Loop Fusion

A compiler optimization technique that combines adjacent loops that have the same loop bounds but operate on different arrays or perform different operations, into a single loop to reduce loop overhead and improve cache performance.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Optimization

Loop Optimization

The process of increasing the execution speed and efficiency of loops in programming.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Engineering

Loop Unrolling

An optimization technique that increases a program's speed by reducing the number of instructions executed through the reduction of the loop's control overhead.

You will find this term commonly used in Programming, Compiler Design

Loopback

A communication channel with only one endpoint. In networking, it's used to test network interfaces.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

Loopback Address

A loopback address is a special IP address (127.0.0.1 in IPv4) used to test the network interface of a device.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

Loopback Interface

A loopback interface is a virtual network interface within a device that allows it to communicate with itself, often used for testing or diagnostic purposes.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

Loopback Plug

A hardware device used to test the ports of networking devices by sending signals out through the port and receiving them back through the same port. It's useful for diagnosing networking issues and ensuring port functionality.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Hardware

Loopback Test

A loopback test is a diagnostic procedure used to verify the functionality of a network interface by sending data to itself.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

Loss Function

In machine learning and optimization, a function that maps an event or values of one or more variables onto a real number intuitively representing some "cost" associated with the event. It's used to guide the optimization of models.

You will find this term commonly used in Machine Learning

Lossless Compression

Lossless compression is a data compression method that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Compression

Lossy Compression

Lossy compression is a data compression method that sacrifices some data to achieve higher compression ratios.