What does “Reference implementation” mean?

Question

I am trying to learn about CachedRowSet in Java, and I am reading some tutorials about it. I have come across reference implementation terminology very often.

For ex

Answer 1

JSR (Java Specification Request) - theory

RI (Reference Implementation) - concrete, working code proving that JSR can work. Basically, a sample implementation.

You can create your own implementation of any JSR and use RI as an example if you're not sure about something.