# Appendix L. Acronyms
This is a list of acronyms commonly used in the PostgreSQL documentation and in discussions about PostgreSQL.
ANSI
American National Standards Institute (opens new window)
API
Application Programming Interface (opens new window)
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (opens new window)
BKI
CA
Certificate Authority (opens new window)
CIDR
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (opens new window)
CPAN
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (opens new window)
CRL
Certificate Revocation List (opens new window)
CSV
Comma Separated Values (opens new window)
CTE
CVE
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (opens new window)
DBA
Database Administrator (opens new window)
DBI
Database Interface (Perl) (opens new window)
DBMS
Database Management System (opens new window)
DDL
Data Definition Language (opens new window), SQL commands such as CREATE TABLE, ALTER USER
DML
Data Manipulation Language (opens new window), SQL commands such as INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
DST
Daylight Saving Time (opens new window)
ECPG
ESQL
Embedded SQL (opens new window)
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions (opens new window)
FSM
GEQO
GIN
GiST
Git
GMT
Greenwich Mean Time (opens new window)
GSSAPI
Generic Security Services Application Programming Interface (opens new window)
GUC
Grand Unified Configuration, the PostgreSQL subsystem that handles server configuration
HBA
HOT
Heap-Only Tuples (opens new window)
IEC
International Electrotechnical Commission (opens new window)
IEEE
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (opens new window)
IPC
Inter-Process Communication (opens new window)
ISO
International Organization for Standardization (opens new window)
ISSN
International Standard Serial Number (opens new window)
JDBC
Java Database Connectivity (opens new window)
JIT
Just-in-Time compilation (opens new window)
JSON
JavaScript Object Notation (opens new window)
LDAP
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (opens new window)
LSN
Log Sequence Number, see pg_lsn and WAL Internals.
MITM
Man-in-the-middle attack (opens new window)
MSVC
Microsoft Visual C (opens new window)
MVCC
Multi-Version Concurrency Control
NLS
National Language Support (opens new window)
ODBC
Open Database Connectivity (opens new window)
OID
OLAP
Online Analytical Processing (opens new window)
OLTP
Online Transaction Processing (opens new window)
ORDBMS
Object-Relational Database Management System (opens new window)
PAM
Pluggable Authentication Modules (opens new window)
PGSQL
PGXS
PID
Process Identifier (opens new window)
PITR
Point-In-Time Recovery (Continuous Archiving)
PL
Procedural Languages (server-side)
POSIX
Portable Operating System Interface (opens new window)
RDBMS
Relational Database Management System (opens new window)
RFC
Request For Comments (opens new window)
SGML
Standard Generalized Markup Language (opens new window)
SNI
Server Name Indication (opens new window), RFC 6066 (opens new window)
SPI
SP-GiST
Space-Partitioned Generalized Search Tree
SQL
Structured Query Language (opens new window)
SRF
SSH
Secure Shell (opens new window)
SSL
Secure Sockets Layer (opens new window)
SSPI
Security Support Provider Interface (opens new window)
SYSV
Unix System V (opens new window)
TCP/IP
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) / Internet Protocol (IP) (opens new window)
TID
TLS
Transport Layer Security (opens new window)
TOAST
The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique
TPC
Transaction Processing Performance Council (opens new window)
URL
Uniform Resource Locator (opens new window)
UTC
Coordinated Universal Time (opens new window)
UTF
Unicode Transformation Format (opens new window)
UTF8
Eight-Bit Unicode Transformation Format (opens new window)
UUID
WAL
XID
XML