Summary
Interfaces, contracts, methods, operations, entities, objects, and tables, oh my! The OSID Specification defines its own language solely in reference to itself. Developers will look at it from the OSID Language Binding perspective. Others will import concepts from what they have worked with in databases, web services, or MVC-based platforms. The result is a mash of terms that matters once in a while.
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The term contract is often used in service designs to distinguish an interface from a message structure or DTO. The message structure and DTO are considered data while the contract defines the operations on that data. OSIDs define the agreement between service consumers and service providers. In the OSID world, most everything in the specification can be considered a contract, i.e. "The AgentList is a contract."
DTO (DAO, Bean, Domain Object)
A Data Transfer Object is used to transfer bags of data values. However, OSIDs are interfaces into OSID Providers. OSID Providers may be dynamic and DTOs are static.
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Standard (Specification)
OSIDs have historically been referred to as specifications. The difference between a standard and a specification is confusing at best. Typically, one incorporates standards into specifications while others refer to specifications as a type of standard. Some believe a standard has accreditation associated with it, as in meets the standard while others perform quality assurance based on a specification. Some believe that a standard is based on a consensus process but a specification is not. However, most use these terms interchangeably today and more often they get strung together. Who knows.