Glossary | Databaas Docs

Term	Definition
Airflow	Apache Airflow, the scheduler behind ingestion pipelines; a pipeline is an Airflow DAG and Pipelines is its web UI.
Capability (feature permission)	One of the five deployment-wide permissions deciding which features you can open, such as `can_use_notebooks`; the feature checks the capability, not the display name. See permissions reference.
Catalog / Data Catalog	The Data Catalog is the portal screen for browsing warehouses, namespaces and tables; “catalog” also means the underlying registry (Lakekeeper) every engine asks before reading data.
DAG	Airflow’s name for a pipeline: a set of tasks with an order between them. See monitoring pipelines.
Data grant / data permission	A grant on a warehouse, namespace or table that lets your queries read it, separate from feature permissions. See data permissions.
dlt	A Python extract-and-load library, used inside a pipeline task to pull data from an external source. See the dlt documentation.
DuckDB	An in-process SQL engine that runs inside your notebook session over data you have pulled into it. See the DuckDB documentation.
Engine	Whatever actually runs a query: the catalog preview, DuckDB in a notebook, or Trino. See query engines.
Generic table	A catalog entry that is registered but not Iceberg, such as a folder of files or a Delta table, with no snapshots, schema or preview. See table details.
Iceberg table	A table in the Apache Iceberg format — data files plus metadata tracking schema and snapshots — the default table type in Databaas. See Iceberg tables.
JupyterHub	The service giving each user a private notebook server, started when you open Notebooks. See notebook sessions.
Lakehouse	Storage priced like a data lake with the behaviour of database tables — the Databaas data layer. See core concepts.
Lakekeeper	The Iceberg REST catalog Databaas runs — the registry every engine asks before reading data.
marimo	A reactive Python notebook available in every notebook session, alongside Jupyter. See the marimo documentation.
Namespace	A group of tables inside a warehouse, like a schema; namespaces nest and are written with dots, as in `sales.eu.raw`. See core concepts.
Notebook session	Your private notebook server, whose home persists across restarts. See notebook sessions.
Portal	The front door at `https://<your-databaas-domain>`: launcher, Data Catalog, ⌘K search and admin screens, through which every other feature is reached. See the portal tour.
pyiceberg	The Python library that talks to the catalog and loads Iceberg tables into a notebook; `load_user_catalog()` returns one scoped to your grants. See querying data.
Role	Two unrelated things: a portal role bundles the five feature permissions and is assigned to people (roles); a catalog role is a named group you grant data access to (catalog roles).
Single sign-on (SSO)	One Databaas identity that every feature trusts, so you sign in once and your identity travels with your queries. See quickstart.
Snapshot	A complete, consistent version of an Iceberg table at one moment; every write creates a new one and older ones are kept. See Iceberg tables.
SQL Lab	The SQL query editor inside Superset, running over Trino. See SQL Lab.
Superset	The dashboard and SQL tool; a door, not a filter — everyone who can open it sees the same charts, but each query runs as the person who opened it. See building dashboards.
Table	A set of rows and columns registered in the catalog, addressed by warehouse, namespace and name; most are Iceberg, some generic. See core concepts.
Time travel	Reading an Iceberg table as it was at an earlier snapshot instead of as it is now. See snapshots and time travel.
Trino	The shared, scale-out SQL engine that runs a query next to the data and returns only the result, behind SQL Lab and Superset charts. See query engines.
Warehouse	The top-level catalog container: a named storage area holding namespaces and tables, and the first level at which data access is granted. See browsing the catalog.
Zitadel	The single sign-on and identity service behind Databaas; administrators manage accounts through Identity in the portal.