National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

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NIST stands for National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government organization that provides services and programs to help U.S. industries commercialize new technologies and compete internationally. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) certification identifies technologies as meeting federal government requirements.

National Institute of Standards and Technology - NIST
NIST

NIST was founded in 1901 and is now part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It’s one of the nation’s oldest physical science laboratories. Congress established the agency to remove a major challenge to U.S. industrial competitiveness at the time – a second-rate measurement infrastructure that lagged behind the capabilities of the United Kingdom, Germany, and other economic rivals.

From the smart electric power grid and electronic health records to atomic clocks, advanced nanomaterials, and computer chips, innumerable products, and services rely in some way on technology, measurement, and standards provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)

In the area of relational database management systems (RDBMS’s), NIST administers a test named Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 127-2. FIPS 127-2 is based on the broader American National Standards Institute (ANSI) SQL92 standard, which ensures portability across heterogeneous RDBMS’s by establishing a common set of structured query language (SQL) commands. There is no higher standard for SQL database languages than FIPS 127-2.

Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 was the first RDBMS to pass the NIST version 5.1 validation tests for Entry Level FIPS 127-2. SQL Server 6.5 complies with both the ANSI SQL92 standard and the FIPS standards.

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