Glossary

65 terms, generated automatically from every article's frontmatter — never hand-maintained separately.

ABCDEFGILMNOPRSTVW#

A

Abstraction
Hiding complexity behind a simpler interface — the core mental tool of all of computer science, from functions to operating systems.
From: What Computer Science Actually Is (and What It Isn't) (Guide)
Application log
From: Reading Windows Event Viewer Without Getting Lost (Guide)
Application pool
An isolated worker-process boundary in IIS that runs one or more web applications, separate from other application pools on the same server.
From: IIS Application Pools: What They Are and Why They Crash (Guide)
Authoritative nameserver
From: How DNS Resolution Actually Works (Guide)

B

Build artifact
From: What Is a CI/CD Pipeline, Really (Guide)

C

Caselet
A Data Interpretation format that presents data as a written paragraph rather than a table or chart, requiring the solver to first extract and organize the relevant numbers before any calculation can begin.
From: CAT LRDI: Data Interpretation Sets (Guide)
Certificate authority
From: TLS/SSL Handshake, Step by Step (Guide)
Certificate chain
The sequence of certificates from a site's own certificate up to a trusted root certificate authority, each one signed by the next, that a client verifies before trusting a connection.
From: TLS/SSL Handshake, Step by Step (Guide)
chmod
The command used to change a file or directory's permission bits (read, write, execute).
From: Linux File Permissions: chmod/chown Demystified (Guide)
chown
The command used to change a file or directory's owner and/or group.
From: Linux File Permissions: chmod/chown Demystified (Guide)
Cipher suite
From: TLS/SSL Handshake, Step by Step (Guide)
Cloud Run
A GCP service that runs stateless containers, automatically scaling from zero to many instances based on incoming traffic, without you managing the underlying servers.
From: Your First GCP Cloud Run Deployment (Lab)
Commit
A saved snapshot of the staged changes, with a message, forming one point in the project's history.
From: Git for a Real Website: The iamravi.com Workflow (Guide)
Container image
From: Your First GCP Cloud Run Deployment (Lab)
Continuous Deployment (CD)
Automatically shipping a change to production (or a staging environment) once it passes CI, without a manual deployment step.
From: What Is a CI/CD Pipeline, Really (Guide)
Continuous Integration (CI)
Automatically building and testing code every time it's changed, so integration problems are caught within minutes rather than discovered much later.
From: What Is a CI/CD Pipeline, Really (Guide)
Contributing factor
From: Root Cause Analysis: A Simple Framework (Guide)

D

Data structure
A way of organizing data in memory so that specific operations become efficient.
From: Data Structures & Algorithms: How to Actually Start (Guide)
DNS
Domain Name System — the distributed lookup service that translates human-readable hostnames into IP addresses.
From: How DNS Resolution Actually Works (Guide)

E

Environment variable
From: Secrets Management: Don't Commit That Password (Guide)
Error log
A running record of mistakes made in practice and mock tests, categorized by type (concept gap, careless error, time-management error, wrong set selection) and reviewed periodically to identify recurring patterns rather than treating each mistake as an isolated incident.
From: CAT Mock Test Analysis Framework (Guide)
Event ID
A numeric identifier for a specific type of logged event, used to search or filter for a known, recurring pattern across servers.
From: Reading Windows Event Viewer Without Getting Lost (Guide)

F

Fast-forward merge
A merge where the target branch's history moves forward to match the source branch, with no new merge commit created — only possible when there's no divergent history to reconcile.
From: Git for a Real Website: The iamravi.com Workflow (Guide)
Five Whys
From: Root Cause Analysis: A Simple Framework (Guide)
force-with-lease
A safer variant of a force push that refuses to overwrite the remote branch if someone else has pushed to it since you last fetched.
From: Git for a Real Website: The iamravi.com Workflow (Guide)
Fundamental counting principle
The basic rule that if one event can occur in m ways and a second independent event can occur in n ways, the two events together can occur in m x n ways - the foundation most permutation and combination problems build on.
From: CAT Quant: Modern Math (Guide)

G

Grid notation
A shorthand table or matrix used to track partially-deduced arrangement puzzle information as clues are processed, allowing a solver to see what is confirmed, what is ruled out, and what remains uncertain at a glance.
From: CAT LRDI: Arrangements (Guide)

I

Idempotent
An operation that produces the same result no matter how many times it's repeated — relevant to which HTTP methods are safe to retry.
From: HTTP Status Codes You'll Actually See in Production (Guide)
Inference question
A question that asks what can be reasonably concluded from the passage, without the answer being directly stated in the text - distinct from a fact-based question that can be located word-for-word.
From: CAT VARC: Reading Comprehension (Guide)

L

Layer isolation
From: Isolating "Is It the Network or the App?" (Troubleshooting Walkthrough)
Linking cue
A word or phrase - such as a pronoun, a transition word, or a reference to a previously mentioned idea - that signals how one sentence connects to another, used to reconstruct the original sequence of a jumbled paragraph.
From: CAT VARC: Para-jumbles (Guide)
Log correlation
From: Reading Logs Backwards: A Debugging Habit (Guide)

M

Metric
A numeric measurement recorded over time, like CPU usage or request count — good for trends and alerting, not for explaining a single specific failure.
From: Monitoring 101: Metrics, Logs, and Traces (Guide)

N

Normalization
A statistical adjustment applied when an exam is conducted across multiple slots, correcting for any difficulty difference between slots so no candidate is advantaged or disadvantaged by which slot they were assigned.
From: CAT Percentile Explained (Guide)

O

Observability
From: Monitoring 101: Metrics, Logs, and Traces (Guide)
Octal permission notation
From: Linux File Permissions: chmod/chown Demystified (Guide)

P

Percentile
A measure of standing relative to every other test-taker — a 99th percentile score means you scored higher than 99% of everyone who took the exam that year.
From: CAT Percentile Explained (Guide)
Pipeline stage
From: What Is a CI/CD Pipeline, Really (Guide)

R

Rapid-fail protection
From: IIS Application Pools: What They Are and Why They Crash (Guide)
Reactive vs. proactive
From: From Support Work to Systems Thinking (Career Advice)
Recursive query
From: How DNS Resolution Actually Works (Guide)
Recycling
From: IIS Application Pools: What They Are and Why They Crash (Guide)
Remainder theorem
A set of techniques for finding the remainder of a division without performing the full division, especially useful for large numbers in timed exam conditions.
From: CAT Quant: Number Systems (Guide)
Resolver
The component (often provided by your OS or ISP) that performs the actual multi-step DNS lookup on your behalf.
From: How DNS Resolution Actually Works (Guide)
Root cause
The underlying condition that, if changed, would have prevented the incident — as distinct from a contributing factor that merely made it worse or more likely.
From: Root Cause Analysis: A Simple Framework (Guide)

S

Scope creep
From: Your Capstone Project: Scoping It Right (Guide)
Secret
Any credential, key, token, or password that grants access to something — must never be committed to source control in plain text.
From: Secrets Management: Don't Commit That Password (Guide)
Sectional time limit
A fixed time allotted to each of CAT's three sections, which cannot be borrowed from another section.
From: CAT Exam Pattern (Guide)
Serverless
From: Your First GCP Cloud Run Deployment (Lab)
Staging area
Also called the index — a holding area where you list exactly which changes will go into the next commit.
From: Git for a Real Website: The iamravi.com Workflow (Guide)
System log
From: Reading Windows Event Viewer Without Getting Lost (Guide)

T

Terminal
A text-based interface for running commands directly, without a graphical menu.
From: Setting Up Your First Development Environment (Lab)
Time complexity
How an algorithm's cost grows as its input grows, described with Big-O notation.
From: Data Structures & Algorithms: How to Actually Start (Guide)
TITA
Type In The Answer — a non-MCQ question format in CAT where the candidate types a numeric or text answer directly, with no options to choose from.
From: CAT Exam Pattern (Guide)
TLS
Transport Layer Security — the protocol that encrypts data in transit between a client and server; the successor to the older, deprecated SSL protocol (the names are still used interchangeably in casual conversation).
From: TLS/SSL Handshake, Step by Step (Guide)
Trace
A record of a single request's full path through a system, including every service it touched and how long each step took.
From: Monitoring 101: Metrics, Logs, and Traces (Guide)
TTL
Time To Live — how long a DNS answer is allowed to be cached before it must be looked up again.
From: How DNS Resolution Actually Works (Guide)

V

Variable
A named box that holds a value your program can read and change while it runs.
From: Your First Program: Understanding Before Memorizing (Guide)
Version control
A system that records changes to files over time, so you can see history, undo mistakes, and collaborate without overwriting each other's work.
From: Why Git Matters Even as a Student (Guide)

W

Weighted average
An average where different data points contribute unequally to the final value, based on an assigned weight rather than being counted equally.
From: CAT Quant: Arithmetic (Guide)
Worker process (w3wp.exe)
The actual Windows process that runs your application's code inside an application pool; it can be recycled or crash independently of IIS itself.
From: IIS Application Pools: What They Are and Why They Crash (Guide)
Working tree
The actual files on disk in your project folder, as you see and edit them right now.
From: Git for a Real Website: The iamravi.com Workflow (Guide)
Worktree
A second working directory attached to the same repository, checked out to a different branch, so you can work on two branches at once without stashing or switching.
From: Git for a Real Website: The iamravi.com Workflow (Guide)

#

502 Bad Gateway
From: HTTP Status Codes You'll Actually See in Production (Guide)
504 Gateway Timeout
From: HTTP Status Codes You'll Actually See in Production (Guide)

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