Unified access to resources

Architecture that provides a unified interface to access resources in different formats and in disparate resource locations for a process (e.g., consuming application). The unified interface is extensible such that users can add additional components to the unified interface to provide access to new resources and new resource references. The interface provides the capability to create a single comprehensive index of all available resources regardless of the resource format. Format-specific indexers are provided for the resources to find, enumerate, and process the resources into a structure suitable for processing by an indexing component into the index. A user can introduce new format-specific indexers for new resources and new resource references for processing by the indexing component into the index. The unified interface now provides access to the new resources and new resources references as well.