database engine

The part of a database management system that manipulates data files. This process receives SQL statements from the database application, parses them, optimizes the approach to the data, retrieves the data from the database, and returns the data to the application. Informix provides two database engines: INFORMIX-OnLine and INFORMIX-SE (both UNIX and DOS versions). The database engine is also called the back end, database server, or database agent.

See also application development tool, database, process.