1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

Active Directory: The Windows implementation of a general-purpose directory service, which uses LDAP as its primary access protocol. Active Directory stores information about a variety of objects in the network such as user accounts, computer accounts, groups, and all related credential information used by Kerberos [MS-KILE]. Active Directory is either deployed as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) or Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), which are both described in [MS-ADOD]: Active Directory Protocols Overview.

address book: A collection of Address Book objects, each of which are contained in any number of address lists.

address list: A collection of distinct Address Book objects.

alias: An alternate name that can be used to reference an object or element.

ambiguous name resolution (ANR): A search algorithm that permits a client to search multiple naming-related attributes on objects by way of a single clause of the form "(anr=value)" in a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) search filter. This permits a client to query for an object when the client possesses some identifying material related to the object but does not know which attribute of the object contains that identifying material.

ASCII: The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is an 8-bit character-encoding scheme based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text. ASCII refers to a single 8-bit ASCII character or an array of 8-bit ASCII characters with the high bit of each character set to zero.

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].

Autodiscover server: A server in a managed environment that makes setup and configuration information available to Autodiscover clients. The location of Autodiscover servers is made available via the Autodiscover HTTP Service Protocol, as described in [MS-OXDISCO].

base64 encoding: A binary-to-text encoding scheme whereby an arbitrary sequence of bytes is converted to a sequence of printable ASCII characters, as described in [RFC4648].

binary large object (BLOB): A discrete packet of data that is stored in a database and is treated as a sequence of uninterpreted bytes.

blind carbon copy (Bcc) recipient: An addressee on a Message object that is not visible to recipients of the Message object.

calendar: A date range that shows availability, meetings, and appointments for one or more users or resources. See also Calendar object.

Calendar folder: A Folder object that contains Calendar objects.

Calendar object: A Message object that represents an event, which can be a one-time event or a recurring event. The Calendar object includes properties that specify event details such as description, organizer, date and time, and status.

certificate revocation list (CRL): A list of certificates that have been revoked by the certification authority (CA) that issued them (that have not yet expired of their own accord). The list must be cryptographically signed by the CA that issues it. Typically, the certificates are identified by serial number. In addition to the serial number for the revoked certificates, the CRL contains the revocation reason for each certificate and the time the certificate was revoked. As described in [RFC3280], two types of CRLs commonly exist in the industry. Base CRLs keep a complete list of revoked certificates, while delta CRLs maintain only those certificates that have been revoked since the last issuance of a base CRL. For more information, see [X509] section 7.3, [MSFT-CRL], and [RFC3280] section 5.

certification authority (CA): A third party that issues public key certificates. Certificates serve to bind public keys to a user identity. Each user and certification authority (CA) can decide whether to trust another user or CA for a specific purpose, and whether this trust should be transitive. For more information, see [RFC3280].

character set: The range of characters used to represent textual data within a MIME body part, as described in [RFC2046].

condition: A logical expression comparing one or more properties in all incoming Message objects against a set of clauses. This logical expression can evaluate to TRUE or FALSE.

contact: (1) An object of the contact class that represents a company or person whom a user can contact. 

(2) A person, company, or other entity that is stored in a directory and is associated with one or more unique identifiers and attributes, such as an Internet message address or login name.

Contacts folder: A Folder object that contains Contact objects.

conversation: A single representation of a send/response series of email messages. A conversation appears in the Inbox as one unit and allows the user to view and read the series of related email messages in a single effort.

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).

Deleted Items folder: A special folder that is the default location for objects that have been deleted.

distribution list: A collection of users, computers, contacts, or other groups that is used only for email distribution, and addressed as a single recipient.

domain: A set of users and computers sharing a common namespace and management infrastructure. At least one computer member of the set must act as a domain controller (DC) and host a member list that identifies all members of the domain, as well as optionally hosting the Active Directory service. The domain controller provides authentication of members, creating a unit of trust for its members. Each domain has an identifier that is shared among its members. For more information, see [MS-AUTHSOD] section 1.1.1.5 and [MS-ADTS].

Domain Name System (DNS): A hierarchical, distributed database that contains mappings of domain names to various types of data, such as IP addresses. DNS enables the location of computers and services by user-friendly names, and it also enables the discovery of other information stored in the database.

Drafts folder: A special folder that is the default location for Message objects that have been saved but not sent.

Email Text Body: The textual portion of a message that is displayed, by convention, by industry standard email clients. The Internet mail format, as described in [RFC822], allowed only text messages to be transmitted. The concept of transmitting content other than text was not codified until MIME was standardized. Handling of entities other than the textual portion of a message, such as attachments, varies by implementation in email clients.

ghosted: A property that is not deleted by the server if the element is not included in a Sync <Change> request message.

Global Address List (GAL): An address list that conceptually represents the default address list for an address book.

globally unique identifier (GUID): A term used interchangeably with universally unique identifier (UUID) in Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the value. Specifically, the use of this term does not imply or require that the algorithms described in [RFC4122] or [C706] must be used for generating the GUID. See also universally unique identifier (UUID).

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): An application of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) that uses tags to mark elements in a document, as described in [HTML].

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): An application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web.

Inbox folder: A special folder that is the default location for Message objects received by a user or resource.

locale: A collection of rules and data that are specific to a language and a geographical area. A locale can include information about sorting rules, date and time formatting, numeric and monetary conventions, and character classification.

mailbox: A message store that contains email, calendar items, and other Message objects for a single recipient.

meeting: An event with attendees.

meeting request: An instance of a Meeting Request object.

message body: The main message text of an email message. A few properties of a Message object represent its message body, with one property containing the text itself and others defining its code page and its relationship to alternative body formats.

message store: A unit of containment for a single hierarchy of Folder objects, such as a mailbox or public folders.

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME): A set of extensions that redefines and expands support for various types of content in email messages, as described in [RFC2045], [RFC2046], and [RFC2047].

named property: A property that is identified by both a GUID and either a string name or a 32-bit identifier.

OOF message: A message that is sent in response to incoming messages and indicates that the user is currently Out of Office (OOF).

organizer: The owner or creator of a meeting or appointment.

Out of Office (OOF): One of the possible values for the free/busy status on an appointment. It indicates that the user will not be in the office during the appointment.

Outbox folder: A special folder that contains Message objects that are submitted to be sent.

Personal Information Manager (PIM): A category of software packages for managing commonly used types of personal information, including contacts, email messages, calendar appointments, and meetings.

plain text: Text that does not have markup. See also plain text message body.

recipient: An entity that can receive email messages. 

recipient information cache: An information store that contains a list of the contacts (2) with whom a user has interacted most often and most recently, and with whom the user is likely to interact again.

recurrence instance: A single calendar event generated by the recurrence pattern of a recurring series. Also referred to as an instance. If properties on the instance have changed after the instance was generated, the instance can also be known as an Exception object.

resource: Any component that a computer can access that can read, write, and process data. This includes internal components (such as a disk drive), a service, or an application running on and managed by the cluster on a network that is used to access a file.

root folder: The special folder that is the top-level folder in a message store hierarchy. It contains all other Folder objects in that message store.

S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions): A set of cryptographic security services, as described in [RFC5751].

search folder: A Folder object that provides a means of querying for items that match certain criteria. The search folder includes the search folder definition message and the search folder container.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): A security protocol that supports confidentiality and integrity of messages in client and server applications that communicate over open networks. SSL supports server and, optionally, client authentication using X.509 certificates [X509] and [RFC5280]. SSL is superseded by Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS version 1.0 is based on SSL version 3.0 [SSL3].

Sent Items folder: A special folder that is the default location for storing copies of Message objects after they are submitted or sent.

Short Message Service (SMS): A communications protocol that is designed for sending text messages between mobile phones.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP): A member of the TCP/IP suite of protocols that is used to transport Internet messages, as described in [RFC5321].

special folder: One of a default set of Folder objects that can be used by an implementation to store and retrieve user data objects.

Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF): A binary type-length-value encoding that is used to encode properties for transport, as described in [MS-OXTNEF].

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): A string that identifies a resource. The URI is an addressing mechanism defined in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax [RFC3986].

Uniform Resource Locator (URL): A string of characters in a standardized format that identifies a document or resource on the World Wide Web. The format is as specified in [RFC1738].

Universal Naming Convention (UNC): A string format that specifies the location of a resource. For more information, see [MS-DTYP] section 2.2.57.

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.

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Binary XML (WBXML): A compact binary representation of XML that is designed to reduce the transmission size of XML documents over narrowband communication channels.

XML: The Extensible Markup Language, as described in [XML1.0].

XML namespace: A collection of names that is used to identify elements, types, and attributes in XML documents identified in a URI reference [RFC3986]. A combination of XML namespace and local name allows XML documents to use elements, types, and attributes that have the same names but come from different sources. For more information, see [XMLNS-2ED].

XML schema: A description of a type of XML document that is typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, in addition to the basic syntax constraints that are imposed by XML itself. An XML schema provides a view of a document type at a relatively high level of abstraction.

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.