When you program for Indexing Service, the tasks you want to accomplish fall into three general categories: managing, querying, and indexing. The following table lists these types of tasks and gives a brief description of each.
| Task Type |
Description |
| Managing |
Includes retrieving and setting the Indexing Service catalogs and their scopes, retrieving and setting entries in the Windows® registry, and determining and controlling the state of Indexing Service activity. |
| Querying |
Includes constructing, submitting, and presenting a query in one of the Indexing Service query languages to a specified Indexing Service catalog and retrieving the results. |
| Indexing (Filtering) |
Includes developing IFilter implementations for custom file types and selecting features of standard filter implementations. |