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General glossary
- CIIM
- a software product that brings your data together from separate sources so that you, and the public can use it more effectively. The acronym stands for Collections Information Integration Middleware.
- Elasticsearch
- the database and search engine that CIIM uses for bringing together, managing and searching your data.
- Lucene queries
- search queries written for Lucene, the technology that underlies Elasticsearch. Lucene syntax is the set of rules for writing these queries, which are powerful and support proximity and relevance searching. CIIM allows you to use Lucene syntax in your searches as a shortcut to query your data in very specific ways.
- JSON
- a language that represents structured data, including arrays and attribute-value pairs, in machine-readable text. It uses curly brackets, double quotes and other punctuation to separate and organise the data. [nesting]
- JSON path
- a way of describing a field in your data, using a dot notation that identifies precisely what you are searching, like title.value.keyword. CIIM allows you to use JSON dot notation to specify which fields in your data you want to apply a text search, sorting or filter to.
- API
- a service that allows two pieces of software to talk directly to each other. An API typically responds to a request with a structured reply (which can contain large amounts of data). Your Collections Management System has an API that allows CIIM to ingest data directly from it; and CIIM has an API that allows developers to build collections online. The acronym stands for Application Programming Interface.
- Collections Management System
- the database that holds your organisation’s records about its collections. Mimsy XG and Axiell Collections are examples of collections management systems. Sometimes the acronym CMS is used, but this can also be used for a Content Management System, which manages the other content on a website.
- Digital Asset Management System (DAMS)
- the system that contains digital images of your collection, separately to your collections management system. CIIM can bring together data from your DAMS and your collections management system for your public collections search.
- Public collections search
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the place on your website where your collection can be searched and seen by the public.