Nerd Words of the Week

idempotent:
The term idempotent is used in mathematics to describe a function that produces the same result if it is applied to itself, i.e. f(x) = f(f(x)). In Messaging this concepts translates into the a message that has the same effect whether it is received once or multiple times. This means that a message can safely be resent without causing any problems even if the receiver receives duplicates of the same message.


canonicalize:
Wikipedia definition
It is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a standard canonical representation. This can be done to compare different representations for equivalence, to count the number of distinct data structures, to improve the efficiency of various algorithms by eliminating repeated calculations, or to make it possible to impose a meaningful sorting order.
Wikipedia example
As an example, Wikipedia uses canonicalization in its processing of links between articles. For example:

[[Egg_salad]]
[[egg salad]]
[[ egg_salad ]]
all refer to same article.