Glossary

Schema - A set of related database objects. An HR schema would store personnel and payroll information; a GL schema would store the chart of accounts, etc.

SQL Analytics - SQL Analytic Functions are a series of SQL functions introduced by Oracle in Oracle Database Server 8i. Analytic functions allow a query writer to aggregate data across a series of partitions in the data. Each function may be partitioned by a different set of criteria. Each row of a result set returns the aggregate for all partitions within the functions view.

Michael Stonebraker - Michael Stonebraker is a well known database guru having started Ingres and Postgres while at UC Berkeley. He's also commercialized Ingres, Illustra and now Vertica. He's also won a boatload of awards from various groups like IEEE & ACM. The short story is that he has an interesting and significant background.

Surrogate Key - A surrogate key is a sequential number that is meaningless. In oracle it's usually created by a sequence.