Glossary

Adapter

Core functionality offered by the node (see also, external adapter).

Answer

The result produced from an oracle service, after aggregation.

Assignment

V1 spec of a JobSpec which was used by the Ruby Node.

Bridge

Bridge is the technical term for an external adapter used within the node's API. When you add a "Bridge Type" to the node, you are adding a link to the external adapter.

Consumer

A Smart Contract which uses the services of an oracle to receive an Answer.

External Adapter

External adapters are what make Chainlink easily extensible, providing simple integration of custom computations and specialized APIs. A Chainlink node communicates with external adapters via a simple REST API.

Function Selector

A function selector is the first four bytes of the call data for a function call and specifies the function to be called.

Initiator

Starts the JobSpec.

Available initiators are:

runlog
specandrun
cron
ethlog
runat
web

Job

This term is usually used as short-hand for a JobSpec.

JobRun

The run of a job's execution, tracks multiple TaskRuns.

JobSpec

The JobSpec is the definition for what initiates a job and tasks to perform. The complete JobSpec includes parameters which determine off-chain actions (tasks), and on-chain requirements (deposit, payment, response time, etc.).

Oracle

Entity which connects computations on blockchains with off-chain resources. Typically made up of two components: the Oracle Node (off-chain) and the Oracle Contract (on-chain).

Oracle Contract

The on-chain component of an Oracle. The Oracle Contract is the interface through which Consuming Contracts pass and receive data with off-chain resources.