(1) One or more contiguous elements of a string.
(2) For TCP/IP, the unit of end-to-end transmission in the TCP. A segment consists of control information and data fields. A segment is transmitted as an IP datagram.
(3) A part of a program that can be run without the entire program being in main storage.
(4) In IMS, the unit of access to a database; for the database system, the smallest amount of data that can be transferred by one IMS operation. For input terminal operations using IMS TM, a segment is defined by the particular terminal type and is obtained by the application program with one call.
(5) A group of pages that holds a row of a single table.
(6) A collection of composed text and images, prepared before formatting and included in a document when it is printed.
(7) In data mining, a group of input data records within a data set that have similar characteristics. Each group is called a segment. Within a segment, each piece of data is evaluated (or scored) for the degree to which it fits the segment to which it belongs. This statistical conformance is represented by a number, called the score, which ranges between 0.0 and 1.0. In DB2 Intelligent Miner, this concept is known as a cluster.
(8) A unit of code or data produced by the linker and existing only in an executable image of the program. The linker assigns attributes to sections, orders and groups them, and puts them into segments. See also section.