TS ISO/IEC 2382-4

TS ISO/IEC 2382-4 is a vocabulary standard for information technology that names selected concepts related to data organization and explains the relationships among those concepts. It assembles terms and definitions intended to support international communication, with particular attention to character sets, codes, graphic characters, control characters, strings, words, data sets, separators and identifiers.

The terminology framework behind data organization

In information technology, data organization is about structuring information so it can be stored, read, processed and exchanged consistently across systems. The distinction between a character set and a code is especially important in this context: a character set defines the available symbols, while a code defines how those symbols are represented. The relational approach used in a vocabulary standard helps users understand not only each term, but also how one entry connects to other conceptual entries.

Text units, separators and identifiers

This subject area is closely tied to how text and records are delimited. Strings and words describe logical units of text handling, while separators mark boundaries between fields, items or records and help preserve the intended structure of data. Identifiers are used to designate objects, fields or records in a distinct way. These conceptual distinctions matter in data dictionaries, communication protocols, character encoding practices and general program-to-program data exchange.

This listing is also a withdrawn TS edition: it was adopted in 2006 and withdrawn in 2015. In practical technical terms, it remains a useful reference for understanding how core IT data elements are named, grouped and defined within the broader vocabulary of information technology.