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I had a recent question tagged with database-agnostic and I thought, that's strange, couldn't most questions be similarly tagged? Put another way, wouldn't a question about a specific database be off-topic? How many shared databases are available to us from a DBA perspective?

Then I realised: they meant DBMS-agnostic. However, I couldn't find a tag for that. Conclusion: the tag is misnamed.

How to get this fixed?

Just to be clear, I am aware it is common to use 'database' as a contraction of DBMS (it is after all three syllables compared with four!) And no doubt there are some of us that think SQL Server is a database. However, I understand this site is about learning and that precise language is important for something as high level and oft used as a tag.

FWIW the vast majority of database- tags use the word appropriately. The only other inappropriate one I could spot was database-internals.

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It's a well-argued and sensible suggestion, but I personally think that while the principle of using of precise language is a good one, in this case there is no precise language to choose.

As can be seen on the Oracle site here and the SQL Server site here, 'DBMS' has almost completely disappeared in favour of 'database'.

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    The SQL Server example says "Database Platform" rather than just the word "Database" though.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 5:41
  • 1
    Not consistently though, eg "SQL Server is the least vulnerable database for six years"
    – Jack Douglas Mod
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 18:32

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