1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

8.3 name: A file name string restricted in length to 12 characters that includes a base name of up to eight characters, one character for a period, and up to three characters for a file name extension. For more information on 8.3 file names, see [MS-CIFS] section 2.2.1.1.1.

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.

address type: An identifier for the type of email address, such as SMTP and EX.

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.

Attachment object: A set of properties that represents a file, Message object, or structured storage that is attached to a Message object and is visible through the attachments table for a Message object.

attachments table: A Table object whose rows represent the Attachment objects that are attached to a Message object.

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].

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].

best body: The text format that provides the richest representation of a message body (2). The algorithm for determining the best-body format is described in [MS-OXBBODY].

big-endian: Multiple-byte values that are byte-ordered with the most significant byte stored in the memory location with the lowest address.

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.

body part: A part of an Internet message, as described in [RFC2045].

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

carbon copy (Cc) recipient: An address on a Message object that is visible to recipients of the Message object but is not necessarily expected to take any action.

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

code page: An ordered set of characters of a specific script in which a numerical index (code-point value) is associated with each character. Code pages are a means of providing support for character sets and keyboard layouts used in different countries. Devices such as the display and keyboard can be configured to use a specific code page and to switch from one code page (such as the United States) to another (such as Portugal) at the user's request.

contact: 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.

contact attachment: An attached message item that has a message type of "IPM.Contact" and adheres to the definition of a Contact object.

Contact object: A Message object that contains properties pertaining to a contact.

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).

cyclic redundancy check (CRC): An algorithm used to produce a checksum (a small, fixed number of bits) against a block of data, such as a packet of network traffic or a block of a computer file. The CRC is a broad class of functions used to detect errors after transmission or storage. A CRC is designed to catch random errors, as opposed to intentional errors. If errors might be introduced by a motivated and intelligent adversary, a cryptographic hash function should be used instead.

delivery status notification (DSN): A message that reports the result of an attempt to deliver a message to one or more recipients, as described in [RFC3464].

display name: A text string that is used to identify a principal or other object in the user interface. Also referred to as title.

distinguished name (DN): A name that uniquely identifies an object by using the relative distinguished name (RDN) for the object, and the names of container objects and domains that contain the object. The distinguished name (DN) identifies the object and its location in a tree.

domain: A set of users and computers sharing a common namespace and management infrastructure. At least one computer member of the set has to 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].

Embedded Message object: A Message object that is stored as an Attachment object within another Message object.

encapsulation: A process of encoding one document in another document in a way that allows the first document to be re-created in a form that is nearly identical to its original form.

EntryID: A sequence of bytes that is used to identify and access an object.

flags: A set of values used to configure or report options or settings.

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).

header: A name-value pair that supplies structured data in an Internet email message or MIME entity.

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].

Internet Mail Connector Encapsulated Address (IMCEA): A means of encapsulating an email address that is not compliant with [RFC2821] within an email address that is compliant with [RFC2821].

Internet Message Access Protocol - Version 4 (IMAP4): A protocol that is used for accessing email and news items from mail servers, as described in [RFC3501].

Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG): A raster graphics file format for displaying high-resolution color graphics. JPEG graphics apply a user-specified compression scheme that can significantly reduce the file sizes of photo-realistic color graphics. A higher level of compression results in lower quality, whereas a lower level of compression results in higher quality. JPEG-format files have a .jpg or .jpeg file name extension.

language code identifier (LCID): A 32-bit number that identifies the user interface human language dialect or variation that is supported by an application or a client computer.

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.

Mail User Agent (MUA): A client application that is used to compose and read email messages.

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

message body: (1) The content within an HTTP message, as described in [RFC2616] section 4.3.

(2) 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 class: A property that loosely defines the type of a message, contact, or other Personal Information Manager (PIM) object in a mailbox.

Message object: A set of properties that represents an email message, appointment, contact, or other type of personal-information-management object. In addition to its own properties, a Message object contains recipient properties that represent the addressees to which it is addressed, and an attachments table that represents any files and other Message objects that are attached to it.

Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI): A messaging architecture that enables multiple applications to interact with multiple messaging systems across a variety of hardware platforms.

metafile: A file that stores an image as graphical objects, such as lines, circles, and polygons, instead of pixels. A metafile preserves an image more accurately than pixels when an image is resized.

MIME analysis: A process that converts data from an Internet wire protocol to a format that is suitable for storage by a server or a client.

MIME body: The content of a MIME entity, which follows the header of the MIME entity to which they both belong.

MIME content-type: A content type that is as described in [RFC2045], [RFC2046], and [RFC2047].

MIME entity: An entity that is as described in [RFC2045], [RFC2046], and [RFC2047].

MIME generation: A process that converts data held by a server or client to a format that is suitable for Internet wire protocols.

MIME message: A message that is as described in [RFC2045], [RFC2046], and [RFC2047].

MIME part: A message part that is as described in [RFC2045], [RFC2046], and [RFC2047].

MIME reader: An agent that performs MIME analysis. It can be a client or a server.

MIME writer: An agent that performs MIME generation. It can be a client or a server.

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.

non-delivery report: A report message that is generated and sent by a server to the sender of a message if an email message could not be received by an intended recipient.

Object Linking and Embedding (OLE): A technology for transferring and sharing information between applications by inserting a file or part of a file into a compound document. The inserted file can be either embedded or linked. See also embedded object and linked object.

one-off address: An email address that is encoded as a mail-type/address pair. Valid mail-types include values such as SMTP, X400, X500, and MSMAIL.

one-off EntryID: A special address object EntryID that encapsulates electronic address information, as described in [MS-OXCDATA].

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.

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.

Post Office Protocol - Version 3 (POP3): A protocol that is used for accessing email from mail servers, as described in [RFC1939].

primary SMTP proxy address: The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) email address that is used to designate a message server user in all SMTP traffic. Proxy addresses are stored in a user's address book entry, in the PidTagAddressBookProxyAddresses multivalued string property. The primary SMTP proxy address can be identified by its address type field, which is set to "SMTP" (uppercase). Non-primary SMTP proxy addresses have the address type field set to "smtp" (lowercase).

property set: A set of attributes, identified by a GUID. Granting access to a property set grants access to all the attributes in the set.

property type: A 16-bit quantity that specifies the data type of a property value.

PS_INTERNET_HEADERS: An extensible namespace that can store custom property headers.

pure MIME message: A MIME representation of an email message that does not contain a Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) body part.

recipient: (1) An entity that can receive email messages. 

(2) An entity that is in an address list, can receive email messages, and contains a set of attributes. Each attribute has a set of associated values.

recipient table: The part of a Message object that represents users to whom a message is addressed. Each row of the table is a set of properties that represents one recipient (2).

reminder: A generally user-visible notification that a specified time has been reached. A reminder is most commonly related to the beginning of a meeting or the due time of a task but it can be applied to any object type.

remote operation (ROP): An operation that is invoked against a server. Each ROP represents an action, such as delete, send, or query. A ROP is contained in a ROP buffer for transmission over the wire.

remote procedure call (RPC): A communication protocol used primarily between client and server. The term has three definitions that are often used interchangeably: a runtime environment providing for communication facilities between computers (the RPC runtime); a set of request-and-response message exchanges between computers (the RPC exchange); and the single message from an RPC exchange (the RPC message).  For more information, see [C706].

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.

Rich Text Format (RTF): Text with formatting as described in [MSFT-RTF].

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

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].

spam: An unsolicited email message.

stream: (1) An element of a compound file, as described in [MS-CFB]. A stream contains a sequence of bytes that can be read from or written to by an application, and they can exist only in storages.

(2) A flow of data from one host to another host, or the data that flows between two hosts.

To recipient: See primary recipient.

top-level message: A message that is not included in another message as an Embedded Message object. Top-level messages are messaging 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].

Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) message: A MIME representation of an email message in which attachments and some message properties are carried in a Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) body part.

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).

Unified Messaging: A set of components and services that enable voice, fax, and email messages to be stored in a user's mailbox and accessed from a variety of devices.

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].

universally unique identifier (UUID): A 128-bit value. UUIDs can be used for multiple purposes, from tagging objects with an extremely short lifetime, to reliably identifying very persistent objects in cross-process communication such as client and server interfaces, manager entry-point vectors, and RPC objects. UUIDs are highly likely to be unique. UUIDs are also known as globally unique identifiers (GUIDs) and these terms are used interchangeably in the Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the UUID. 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 UUID.

UTF-16LE: The Unicode Transformation Format - 16-bit, Little Endian encoding scheme. It is used to encode Unicode characters as a sequence of 16-bit codes, each encoded as two 8-bit bytes with the least-significant byte first.

vCard: A format for storing and exchanging electronic business cards, as described in [RFC2426].

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.