- This article should be made a disambiguation page, and should attempt to list the various other meanings of this word.
The word profile has a variety of distinct meanings, a few of which are listed below (most are not):
Engineering
In standardisation, a profile is an agreed-upon subset and interpretations of a specification. Many complex specifications have many optional features, such that two conforming implementations may not be interoperable due to choosing different sets of optional features to support. Even when there are no formal optional features in the standard, vendors will often fail to implement (or fail to implement correctly) functionality from the standard which they view as unimportant. In particular, implementations of standards on mobile devices often have significant limitations compared to their traditional desktop implementations, even if these limitations are permitted by the standard which governs both. Also, standards can sometimes be vague or ambiguous, often unintentionally, but sometimes by intention. Profiles can enforce one possible interpretation.
Profiles are useful to users to ensure interoperability, and in procurement.
In some cases, profiles themselves can be standardised. For example, US-GOSIP, UK-GOSIP and the ISO ISP (International Standard Profile) series in the context of OSI networking, and the various mobile profiles adopted by the W3C for web standards.
A profile is the more or less complex outline of a shape to be cut in a sheet of material such as laminated plastic, aluminium alloy or steel plate. In modern practice, the shape and dimensions required to fit the sheet into a larger work are determined in the drawing office and fed to a computer controlling a profile cutter. This then cuts the shape from a standard-sized sheet. The cutting head may be a rotating cutter like that of a spindle router or, in the case of steel plate, it is a torch burning oxy-acetylene or other oxy-gas.
Computing
In computing, a profile includes configuration settings and other data associated with an individual user. Thus for example, in Microsoft Windows users have profiles associated with them storing settings, files, history, web caches, etc. Likewise, in Netscape-derived products (Netscape 6/7, Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.), users have profiles containing their settings, web browsing history, etc. Many systems support storage of the profiles on a centralised computer in a network, so a user can get their own preferred desktop settings on any computer they log into on the network.
Instant Messaging and Chat applications also typically have profiles which include some personal information about the identified user.
- Yourespot - An example of a profile site on the web
- GTalk Profile - Another example of a profile site on the web
Business
A business profile is a summary of a company's products and services.
An investor profile summarizes its investment habits and preferences. See also stock profile
Criminology
See profiler, serial killer
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