What is a key characteristic of change sets in Salesforce?

A key characteristic of change sets in Salesforce is that all components selected appear in a unified view. Change sets allow users to group and manage related components, such as custom objects, fields, or Apex classes, making it easier to understand the entirety of a change before deployment. This unified view helps in reviewing what will be included in the deployment, ensuring that all necessary components are accounted for, which is critical for maintaining the integrity of the deployment process.

The other options do not accurately capture the essence of change sets. While continuous delivery is an important concept, change sets do not inherently enable immediate continuous delivery; rather, they serve as a means to prepare items for deployment at a later time. Automatic filtering of components based on requests is not a function of change sets; rather, the user selects which components to include manually. Lastly, while change sets do provide some visibility into recent changes, they are not primarily designed for visibility into past changes in the way that a version control system might document historical changes.