BOINC Terminology: D

Database Purger

The database purger removes workunit and result database entries when they are no longer needed, first writing them to XML log files. This bounds the size of these tables, so that they act as a working set rather than an archive. This allows database management operations (such as backups and schema changes) to be done quickly.

DCF

Abbreviation for Duration Correction Factor.

Deadline

The "Sell by date" of a result. If you return a result after its deadline has passed, you will not get credit. An exception to this rule is the CPDN project which allows for results to come in late.

Debt

A project's 'debt' is how much work is owed to it, relative to other projects. It regulates if work is requested from a project (long term debt) and which project is next in line to be crunched (short term debt). See Long Term Debt, Short Term Debt, No Work Fetch and Work Fetch Policy.

Defer/Deferral/Deferring

The time between scheduler requests. It's BOINC's way of pausing between requests for work. So not to overload the servers, a standard backoff/deferral of at least 60 seconds is used between communication attempts. If a project is offline or has no work, the deferral increases inside the BOINC client. Minimum is 60 seconds, maximum is 86,400 seconds (1 day).

Detach

When you are done with a project and don't want to crunch for it anymore, you detach from it. Detaching will delete all outstanding results, application executables and other files.

Downloading

The act of getting results into your cache or the science application from the project. This will of course use your internet connection.

Dual Core

This technology allows for two independent CPUs to sit on on CPU die. Also known as Multi-Core.

Duration Correction Factor

With this BOINC learns to estimate the "to completion time" of results more correctly, so in the end you can even download more work. It takes on average about 2 weeks before BOINC gets in the neighborhood of correctly estimated times and even then it continues to correct times. It works per project. Default is 1.

If your times all of a sudden sky-rocket, there's a good chance your DCF numbers are broken (very high). Resetting them to 1 is then a good thing to do. The entry can be found in the client_state.xml file.

| Jorden
| 30
| 1
| 19:38:18
| 2007-01-25
| 86230
| 1
| 111
| 2007-01-25 19:38:18
| 2007-01-25 19:38:18