What does "fully qualified" mean by itself and how it can be used?

Question

I know this phrase from usage with DNS as Fully Qualified Domain Name but that's the only use case I'm aware of.

So, 1. I'm wondering what "Fully Qualified" means by itself and how it is applicable to other subjects.

and 2. is "fully qualified" and "unambiguous" interchangeable?

Andrew Leach · Accepted Answer

Fully Qualified means that whatever it is has all the qualifications which are applicable. This could mean a qualification such as an FQDN has:

qualified adjective
  2 not complete or absolute; limited
  
  [ODO]

That is, a fully-qualified domain name is limited to a specific domain, and that limitation in scope is sufficiently stringent to make it unambiguous.

But they could be academic or vocational qualifications:

qualified adjective
  1 officially recognized as being trained to perform a particular job; certified
  
  [ODO]

In these cases one would not talk of an "unambiguous carpenter".

Chris H · Answer

Wiktionary: Qualification meaning 4 applies to the carpenter, while meaning 1 applies to the Domain Name.  The Fully just means that there are no more qualifications required to make someone suitable for the work, or to remove ambiguity.

fred3 · Answer

If one uses the Merriam-Webster definition of "qualified":
to characterize by naming an attribute
Then, it seems that "fully qualified" would mean:
To characterize by naming all attributes.
And, that would suggest that there's a standard or agreement as to what "all" means.
So, an FQDN example would have "all" as:
Top level domain (TLD) like .com
Second level domain names (SLD) like "google" for which there may be more than one.
Then perhaps a host name like "mymail" or "www".
And stating the value of each one makes it Fully Qualified, i.e. having all of the attributes stated.
We are used to fully qualified postal addresses when we add USA, North America, Planet Earth, etc. where practice suggests that the continent AND the country needn't both be used and adding the planet is silly.  So, one could argue that such addresses aren't "fully qualified" depending on what rules we like to use for "all".

What does "fully qualified" mean by itself and how it can be used?

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