Domain Language

The jargon we use to talk about core concepts in object-relational mapping.

Term	Definition
Association	A relationship between two entities. E.g. customer.orders or customer.address.
Change Tracking	Keeping track of modifications to loaded entities, so that we can generate SQL DML to persist the changes.
Compiled Query	Allowing user-code to reference a query executor component to remove any query preparation overhead.
Eager Load	Loading an entity's related data together with the entity itself.
Expression Tree	Turning code into a tree data structure at runtime, instead of executing it.
Fix-up	The process of ensuring loaded, related entities reference each other properly.
Identity Map	Caching loaded entities in memory, so that we only have a single instance of each entity loaded within a unit of work. (Sometimes called the Level 1 cache)
Ignored	An entity or property that is explicitly excluded from the metadata model.
Lazy Load	Loading an entity's related data only when and if it is needed.
LINQ	Language Integrated Query. The pattern used in .NET that allows database queries to be translated to SQL, but written in C# code.
Metadata Model	The configuration data that describes the model, and how it maps to the database.
Model	The set of entity types, associations and value-types comprising the data and behavior of an application.
Query Compilation	The process of turning a logical query, expressed in API calls, into a physical, reusable execution plan.
Query Operator	A function that describes a specific query operation. e.g. map, where, limit etc.
Navigation Property	A property on an entity type that references another entity type (either single or collection).
Persistent Ignorant	When user-code does not directly depend on any ORM code.
Shadow Property	A property that exists on an entity in the model, but does not exist on the corresponding Typescript class.
Streaming Query	When the results of a query are loaded as they are needed, usually via iteration.
Unit of Work	A logical set of operations against a model that will be flushed to the database in a single transaction.
Update Pipeline	The components that determine how to turn in-memory logical model changes into physical SQL operations.