1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF): A modified version of Backus-Naur Form (BNF), commonly used by Internet specifications. ABNF notation balances compactness and simplicity with reasonable representational power. ABNF differs from standard BNF in its definitions and uses of naming rules, repetition, alternatives, order-independence, and value ranges. For more information, see [RFC5234].

Boolean: An operation or expression that can be evaluated only as either true or false.

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC): A high-precision atomic time standard that approximately tracks Universal Time (UT). It is the basis for legal, civil time all over the Earth. Time zones around the world are expressed as positive and negative offsets from UTC. In this role, it is also referred to as Zulu time (Z) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In these specifications, all references to UTC refer to the time at UTC-0 (or GMT).

dynamic rank: A rank component that indicates how well query text matches an indexed item. See also static rank.

item: A unit of content that can be indexed and searched by a search application.

managed property: A specific property that is part of a metadata schema. It can be exposed for use in search queries that are executed from the user interface.

metadata schema: A schema that is used to manage information about an item.

query text: The textual, string portion of a query.

rank: An integer that represents the relevance of a specific item for a search query. It can be a combination of static rank and dynamic rank. See also static rank and dynamic rank.

result set: A list of records that results from running a stored procedure or query, or applying a filter. The structure and content of the data in a result set varies according to the implementation.

time zone: A geographical area that observes the same local time. The local time has a positive, zero, or negative offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The offset can be different during standard time and daylight saving time.

token: A word in an item or a search query that translates into a meaningful word or number in written text. A token is the smallest textual unit that can be matched in a search query. Examples include "cat", "AB14", or "42".

Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium that represents almost all of the written languages of the world. The Unicode standard [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] provides three forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32) and seven schemes (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 BE, UTF-16 LE, UTF-32, UTF-32 LE, and UTF-32 BE).

UTF-8: A byte-oriented standard for encoding Unicode characters, defined in the Unicode standard. Unless specified otherwise, this term refers to the UTF-8 encoding form specified in [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] section 3.9.

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.