1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

administrator: A user who has complete and unrestricted access to the computer or domain.

application server mode: A mode in which Terminal Services require a client access license (CAL) to allow remote access to sessions on a terminal server.

ASCII: The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is an 8-bit character-encoding scheme based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text. ASCII refers to a single 8-bit ASCII character or an array of 8-bit ASCII characters with the high bit of each character set to zero.

Client Access License (CAL): A license that gives a user the right to access the services of a server. To legally access the server software, a CAL can be required. A CAL is not a software product.

directory service (DS): A service that stores and organizes information about a computer network's users and network shares, and that allows network administrators to manage users' access to the shares. See also Active Directory.

domain: A set of users and computers sharing a common namespace and management infrastructure. At least one computer member of the set has to act as a domain controller (DC) and host a member list that identifies all members of the domain, as well as optionally hosting the Active Directory service. The domain controller provides authentication of members, creating a unit of trust for its members. Each domain has an identifier that is shared among its members. For more information, see [MS-AUTHSOD] section 1.1.1.5 and [MS-ADTS].

endpoint: A network-specific address of a remote procedure call (RPC) server process for remote procedure calls. The actual name and type of the endpoint depends on the RPC protocol sequence that is being used. For example, for RPC over TCP (RPC Protocol Sequence ncacn_ip_tcp), an endpoint might be TCP port 1025. For RPC over Server Message Block (RPC Protocol Sequence ncacn_np), an endpoint might be the name of a named pipe. For more information, see [C706].

GINA: The Graphical Identification and Authentication binary. The binary loaded by logon Service, used by the Winlogon, to show the authentication user interface and to validate the user. The default GINA (MSGINA) can be replaced by a custom GINA if an administrator wants to use its own authentication UI/methods such as fingerprint, voice recognition, and so on. For more information, see [MSDN-GINA].

globally unique identifier (GUID): A term used interchangeably with universally unique identifier (UUID) in Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the value. Specifically, the use of this term does not imply or require that the algorithms described in [RFC4122] or [C706] must be used for generating the GUID. See also universally unique identifier (UUID).

handle: Any token that can be used to identify and access an object such as a device, file, or a window.

Input Method Editor (IME): An application that is used to enter characters in written Asian languages by using a standard 101-key keyboard. An IME consists of both an engine that converts keystrokes into phonetic and ideographic characters and a dictionary of commonly used ideographic words.

Interface Definition Language (IDL): The International Standards Organization (ISO) standard language for specifying the interface for remote procedure calls. For more information, see [C706] section 4.

listener: A session running on a terminal server that listens for incoming connection requests.

Microsoft Interface Definition Language (MIDL): The Microsoft implementation and extension of the OSF-DCE Interface Definition Language (IDL). MIDL can also mean the Interface Definition Language (IDL) compiler provided by Microsoft. For more information, see [MS-RPCE].

named pipe: A named, one-way, or duplex pipe for communication between a pipe server and one or more pipe clients.

opnum: An operation number or numeric identifier that is used to identify a specific remote procedure call (RPC) method or a method in an interface. For more information, see [C706] section 12.5.2.12 or [MS-RPCE].

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP): A multi-channel protocol that allows a user to connect to a computer running Microsoft Terminal Services (TS). RDP enables the exchange of client and server settings and also enables negotiation of common settings to use for the duration of the connection, so that input, graphics, and other data can be exchanged and processed between client and server.

remote procedure call (RPC): A communication protocol used primarily between client and server. The term has three definitions that are often used interchangeably: a runtime environment providing for communication facilities between computers (the RPC runtime); a set of request-and-response message exchanges between computers (the RPC exchange); and the single message from an RPC exchange (the RPC message).  For more information, see [C706].

RPC protocol sequence: A character string that represents a valid combination of a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol, a network layer protocol, and a transport layer protocol, as described in [C706] and [MS-RPCE].

RPC transport: The underlying network services used by the remote procedure call (RPC) runtime for communications between network nodes. For more information, see [C706] section 2.

security identifier (SID): An identifier for security principals that is used to identify an account or a group. Conceptually, the SID is composed of an account authority portion (typically a domain) and a smaller integer representing an identity relative to the account authority, termed the relative identifier (RID). The SID format is specified in [MS-DTYP] section 2.4.2; a string representation of SIDs is specified in [MS-DTYP] section 2.4.2 and [MS-AZOD] section 1.1.1.2.

session: A collection of applications simultaneously running under the same Win32 subsystem.

shell: Part of the Windows user interface (UI) that organizes and controls user access to a wide variety of objects necessary for running applications and managing the operating system. The most numerous are the folders and files that reside on computer storage media. There are also a number of virtual objects such as network printers and other computers. The shell organizes these objects into a hierarchical namespace and provides an API to access them.

SYSTEM: An account that is used by the operating system. For more information about system account access rights, see [MSDN-LocSysAcct].

terminal server: A computer on which terminal services is running.

terminal services (TS): A service on a server computer that allows delivery of applications, or the desktop itself, to various computing devices. When a user runs an application on a terminal server, the application execution takes place on the server computer and only keyboard, mouse, and display information is transmitted over the network. Each user sees only his or her individual session, which is managed transparently by the server operating system and is independent of any other client session.

Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium that represents almost all of the written languages of the world. The Unicode standard [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] provides three forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32) and seven schemes (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 BE, UTF-16 LE, UTF-32, UTF-32 LE, and UTF-32 BE).

universally unique identifier (UUID): A 128-bit value. UUIDs can be used for multiple purposes, from tagging objects with an extremely short lifetime, to reliably identifying very persistent objects in cross-process communication such as client and server interfaces, manager entry-point vectors, and RPC objects. UUIDs are highly likely to be unique. UUIDs are also known as globally unique identifiers (GUIDs) and these terms are used interchangeably in the Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the UUID. Specifically, the use of this term does not imply or require that the algorithms described in [RFC4122] or [C706] must be used for generating the UUID.

well-known endpoint: A preassigned, network-specific, stable address for a particular client/server instance. For more information, see [C706].

Windows Station (WinStation): Sessions running on the computer.

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.