Technical data

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Agilent Technologies
Agilent Connectivity Guide
Glossary
address
A string (or other language construct) that uniquely locates and
identifies a resource. VISA defines an ASCII-based grammar that
associates address strings with particular physical devices or
interfaces and VISA resources.
Agilent 488
An I/O library provided in Agilent IO Libraries Suite for
compatibility with existing test & measurement programs that were
developed using National Instruments’ NI-488.2 or other similar
libraries. Agilent 488 supports communication with GPIB devices
and interfaces, but does not support USB, LAN, RS-232, or VXI
communications.
alias
See VISA alias.
API
Application Programming Interface. The interface that a programmer
sees when creating an application. For example, the VISA API
consists of the sum of all of the operations, attributes, and events of
each of the VISA ResourceClasses.
bridge
In telecommunication networks, a bridge is a product that connects a
local area network (LAN) to another local area network that uses the
same protocol (for example, Ethernet or token ring). You can
envision a bridge as being a device that decides whether a message
from you to someone else is going to the local area network in your
building or to someone on the local area network in the building