Considered as its functor of points, a scheme is a functor which is a sheaf of sets for the Zariski topology on the category of commutative rings, and which, locally in the Zariski topology, is an affine scheme. This can be generalized in several ways. One is to use the étale topology. Michael Artin defined an algebraic space as a functor which is a sheaf in the étale topology and which, locally in the étale topology, is an affine scheme. Equivalently, an algebraic space is the quotient of a scheme by an étale equivalence relation. A powerful result, the Artin representability theorem, gives simple conditions for a functor to be represented by an algebraic space.