PtahGlossary
Ptah's product, workflow, database-support, and compatibility terms, with the file that pins each one.
Every term below carries its definition, the page that uses it, and where a
definition is pinned, the file that decides it. Definitions come from one
source, docs/site/src/glossary.ts, so the same term cannot come to mean two
different things on two pages.
A page that uses a term links here rather than repeating the definition, so a reader who meets a word for the first time has one place to go and the word has one meaning.
Schema and migration terms
- desired-schema
The schema state Ptah is asked to reach, assembled from one or more schema sources before it is compared with a database.
- dev-database
A disposable database Ptah may reset and replay into while materializing schema state or planning a change. It is not the migration target.
- drift
A difference between the desired schema and the state Ptah reads from the target database.
- migration-directory
An ordered set of migration files plus its integrity metadata. Ptah plans, validates, applies, and rolls back the directory as history.
- revision
The migration history state recorded in the target database: which version was applied, when, and with which integrity metadata.
- schema-source
One input that contributes to a desired schema, such as Go annotations, HCL, YAML, SQL, a database, or an external loader.
- shadow-database
A disposable database used to verify that migrations reproduce the intended schema and that rollback behaves as planned.
- throwaway-database
A database supplied specifically for destructive tests or examples, with no state the operator needs to preserve.
Database support terms
- best-effort
A release line Ptah supports without a server in the probe matrix. Its preset is transcribed from measurement rather than re-measured on every run.
- capability
A measured or declared property of a database target that gates one schema construct or behavior independently of the dialect name.
- carried
No server on this line answered for the key. The value is inherited from the preset the line resolves to, and the reason is recorded beside it.
- certified
A release line the capability probe runs against on every pull request, so its preset is checked by a server rather than by a paragraph.
- dialect
The SQL and database family Ptah parses and renders for. A dialect selects a family; capabilities decide which constructs one target accepts.
- known-incompatible
A release line with a named technical incompatibility. Upstream end of life by itself does not make a line incompatible.
- legacy-tested
A release line past its upstream end of life that Ptah still tests. End of life lowers the support level, not the behavior.
- measured
The row was executed against a server on this exact release line, and the answer here is what that server said.
- release-line
A version family Ptah declares as one support and capability measurement cell, such as PostgreSQL 17 or MySQL 8.4.
Inference migration terms
- candidate-generation
A generation being prepared, backfilled, indexed, and verified while queries still read the active generation.
- cutover
The explicit, digest-approved state transition that moves the query pointer from the active generation to a verified candidate.
- generation
One immutable identity for an embedding model, preprocessing contract, target layout, and the vectors produced under that contract.
Compatibility evidence terms
- conformance
External measurement of Ptah against a pinned comparison surface. Registered commands or internal tests alone are not conformance evidence.
- contour
One measured corpus of the conformance repository, with its own report and its own budget file: the offline fixtures, the live round-trip, the Atlas CE differential, the migrate runtime, and the CLI surface. Each is gated on its own.
- full-conformance
A gate that regenerates its report and fails if any non-OK observation remains, waived findings included. It is the yardstick rather than the merge gate.
- regression-budget
A gate that fails when a report exceeds the committed budget for its contour, or when a waiver no longer matches a finding. Green means nothing regressed, not that the contour is covered.
Adding a term
Section titled “Adding a term”Add it to docs/site/src/glossary.ts with its group, the learnMore page
that teaches it, and a source where a file in the repository pins the fact.
The list above renders from that map, so the term appears here without being
transcribed, and check-glossary-coverage.mjs refuses an entry that names a
page which does not exist.
Then link here from the pages that use it. The definition stays in the map and is rendered in one place, which is what keeps a word from meaning one thing on one page and something else on the next.