ISO/IEC TR 24800-1:2012 provides a global view of the JPSearch framework and describes the overall search and management process. An abstract architecture for JPSearch is described, and its components and their roles are explicitly identified. This information aims to facilitate the understanding of the normative parts of JPSearch and the relationships among them.

ISO/IEC 24800 (JPSearch) provides a set of standardized interfaces for digital image management and retrieval systems. There are many systems which provide image search and retrieval functionality on computer desktops, on the World Wide Web, on imaging devices, and in other consumer and professional applications. Existing systems are implemented in a way that tightly couples many components of the search process. JPSearch provides an abstract framework search architecture that decouples the components of image search and provides a standard interface between these components. Thus, aligning image search system design to this standard framework facilitates the use and reuse of metadata, the use and reuse of profiles and ontologies to provide a common context for searching, and the provision of a common query language to easily search across multiple repositories with the same search semantics. Furthermore, using JPSearch allows image repositories to be independent of particular system implementations and for users to easily move or upgrade their image management applications or to move to a different device or upgrade to a new computer.

JPSearch is designed as a multi-part specification. Three main processes are standardized in the specification: search and retrieval by ISO/IEC 24800-3 (query format), the creation or maintenance of metadata by ISO/IEC 24800-4 (file format for metadata embedded in image data) and the synchronization or migration of repositories by ISO/IEC 24800-5 (data interchange format between image repositories). On the other hand, ISO/IEC 24800-2 (registration, identification and management of schema and ontology) links all the other parts to a common metadata interoperability model, which plays a key role in ISO/IEC 24800. ISO/IEC TR 24800-1 (JPSearch overview) and ISO/IEC 24800-6 (reference software) are intended to help understanding and developing JPSearch compliant systems.

ISO/IEC TR 24800-1:2012 reflects the latest updates of ISO/IEC 24800-2, ISO/IEC 24800-3, ISO/IEC 24800-4 and ISO/IEC 24800-5, and incorporates information about the new ISO/IEC 24800-6.