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Identifiers

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Identifiers specify the names of columns (sometimes referred to as properties), catalogs, and aliases. Literals, by contrast, specify string and numeric values.

You can create identifiers that are up to 128 characters in length, and in one of two types, distinguished by the characters used in the identifier name:

  • Regular identifiers contain only the characters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and underscore, and begin with a letter. You do not need to enclose regular identifiers in double quotation marks.
  • Delimited identifiers can contain any valid Unicode character, and must be enclosed in double quotation marks.

Identifiers that you create as Uniform Resource Names (URNs) must contain special characters, are always delimited identifiers, and must be enclosed in double quotation marks.

Note  You can use the asterisk "*" as a special column identifier when you want to specify that Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server Search includes all of the indexed properties in the query. Although it is not a regular identifier, it does not require double quotation marks.