Abstract: Computer-readable media, systems, and methods for enabling a rich client search experience. In embodiments, a description is received from a data store. The description includes fields of information existing on the data store that are capable of being searched. A user interface is built based on the description and the user interface provides a user with a mechanism for searching the data store. And the user interface is presented to the user. The description is definable by the data store using a data-driven extension, allowing the data store to express schema and query capability information to a client and allowing the client to dynamically customize the user interface based upon the schema and query capability information expressed by the data store.

Abstract: Computer assistance content related to a plurality of software entities is combined into a single assistance content corpus. The corpus may be organized hierarchically. The hierarchical organization can be done using content sets that relate assistance content with associated metadata. Content sets can be related to each other in parent-child relationships. The relationship definitions can be separate from the content set definitions. Scope and bias information can be used to constrain assistance content searching over the corpus and to bias search results based on one or more state variables of the user's computer. A remote assistance server can be used to provide updated or newer assistance content to the user. When the remote assistance server is used, an assistance request from the user is supplemented with scope information.