The source table is a user table maintained by Adaptive Server. It contains one or more columns using the text, image, char, varchar, datetime, or small datetime datatype, which holds the data to be searched. With the Enhanced Full-Text Search engine, the source table can also have int, smallint, and tinyint columns, which holds the data to be searched. The source table must have an IDENTITY column, which is used to join the source table with the id column of an index table during text searches.
The source table can be a local table, which holds the actual data, or it can be a proxy table that is mapped to remote data using CIS.