GLOSSARY / SHARED LANGUAGE

Grid terminology, in plain English

A shared vocabulary for the people building, buying and using data-intensive applications.

Data grid

A component for displaying structured data in rows and columns, often with sorting, filtering, editing and selection.

Virtualization

Rendering only the rows or columns near the visible viewport. It reduces rendering work; it does not necessarily reduce the amount of data held in memory.

Lazy loading

Fetching data when needed rather than downloading the entire dataset at once. It is separate from rendering virtualization.

Client-side processing

Sorting, filtering or aggregating data in the user's browser. Capacity depends on the data, implementation and device.

Server-side processing

Processing data on a backend and returning results to the browser. The grid and API must agree on filters, sorting and pagination.

Headless table

Logic for table state and operations without a complete, predesigned rendering interface. Your application supplies the UI and its performance characteristics.

DOM rendering

Displaying cells with HTML elements. CompareGrids uses the supplied “V-DOM” label for virtualized DOM grids; it should not be confused with a framework's virtual-DOM reconciliation.

Canvas rendering

Drawing a grid into a canvas surface. Evaluate editing, accessibility and custom cell requirements in the actual implementation.

Grouping

Organizing rows into sets based on shared values, such as country or department.

Aggregation

Calculating summaries such as sums, averages or counts over a group of records.

Pivot table

Rearranging categories across rows and columns to summarize measures and explore different views of the data.

Normalized score

A conversion of different measurements into points under a chosen scoring system. It depends on the thresholds and included scenarios.

Benchmark

A defined test of specific operations in a specific environment. It is evidence about that setup, not every application.

XLSX export

Creating an Excel workbook. Check whether it includes only loaded rows or all filtered records, and where the export is generated.

License scope

The people, applications and deployments permitted by a license. Price alone does not tell you whether a license covers your intended use.

Throughput

How much work can be completed in a time interval, such as the number of data updates processed each second.

Latency

The delay from initiating an operation to receiving its result. Loading, interaction and export can have different sources of delay.

Auto row heights

Rows that grow to fit their content. Variable heights can change how a virtualized grid calculates scroll positions.

Cell spanning

One cell covering multiple rows or columns, similar to merged cells in a spreadsheet.

Column virtualization

Rendering only columns near the horizontal viewport. Particularly relevant for very wide tables.

Compact data format

A grid-specific representation that may reduce transferred bytes or processing work compared with a conventional JSON representation. Compare both size and conversion cost.

Frozen columns

Columns that remain visible while other columns scroll horizontally; also called pinned or fixed columns.

Gzip

A compression format that a server can use when sending assets or data. Plain and compressed sizes answer different questions.

Interpolation

Calculating a score between two known thresholds. This benchmark uses a straight-line calculation between adjacent numeric thresholds.

Result codes

C: crash; F: fail; B: break; U: unsupported; L: lock or too slow; -: not applicable. See Methodology for how these affect points.

Scroll blank

The manually assigned rating of empty space or placeholders during scrolling. The supplied scale runs from 1 (best) to 6 (worst).

Scroll smooth

The manually assigned rating of how choppy or smooth scrolling feels, from 1 (best) to 6 (worst).

Threshold

A configured measurement value with an assigned number of points. Thresholds determine the benchmark's scoring priorities.

Framework wrapper

An integration layer connecting a grid to a framework. Check who maintains it and which framework and grid versions it supports.

Proof of concept

A focused prototype using representative data to validate critical requirements before committing to a component.