The current WAIS implementation public
domain requires that a client know
the "type" of a object prior to retrieval.
This value is returned along with
the internal object identifier in
the search response. It has been
encoded into the path part of the
URL in order to make the URL sufficient
for the retrieval of the object.
Within the WAIS world, names do not
of course need to be prefixed by
"wais:" (by the partial form rules).
The wpath of a WAIS URL consists
of encoded fields of the WAIS identifier,
in the same order as inthe WAIS identifier.
For each field, the identifier field
number is the digits before the equals
sign, and the field contents follow,
encoded in the conventional encoding,
terminated by ";".