URI Research notes

moving toward the esw wiki

Research Notebook: Recommended Reading

See also: an index of web architecture terms, a glossary of web terms.

IETF - Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Working Group

by Roy Fielding

SDSI---A Simple Distributed Security Infrastructure

especially: Local Names, Certificates, and Name/Value Bindings

BIBLINK - Work Package 2 - Other Resources

Decoupling the URL Scheme from the Transport Protocol

- an idea from TimBL's design issues, independently discovered?

Hypernews on URNs

By Daniel LaLiberte at NCSA. Also, hypernews on URCs.

The Augmented Knowledge Workshop

Engelbart et. al., 1973

Knowledge-Domain Interoperability and an OHS

Douglas C. Engelbart June 1990 (AUGMENT,132082,)

URI background

by Ron Daniel

Stable Network File URLs as a Mechanism for Uniform Naming

by Terry Winograd, Dec 1993. It's no longer at that address, but John S White found a copy in LANL archive for me.

Research Notebook: Works In Progress

An Index of URI Schemes

http:, ftp:, irc:, etc. Need to look one up? Thinking of suggesting a new one?

Notes on URI Implementations

software, documentation, and bugs

W3C Sample Code Library libwww DNS Class

The traditional way to make an HTTP connection is to find the IP address of the host using DNS, and connect to port 80 of that host address. In theory, there can be many IP addresses (so called 'A records') associated with a hostname in DNS. The W3C reference library demonstrates a mechanism to use the additional A records for failover. But in practice, popular clients do not consult these additional A records. The result is a single point of failure in almost all HTTP connections.

Web Design Issues

more on Axioms of Web Architecture, Myth of Naming and Addressing, etc.

An Evaluation of the World Wide Web with respect to Engelbart's Requirements

esp the requirement to have all resources in a hypermedia system addressable

Automated Link Maintenance

Catalog Numbers

URIs for publishing: URNs, Catalog numbers, citations...

Catalogs: Resource Description and Discovery

notes on PICS metadata infrastructure for resource description and catalogs

Quality of Service

on the tension between reliability and scalability

the "me llamo" link

idea: a link type where a document says "I call myself X". In combination with a back-link service, it's a nifty URN idea.

All Resources Addressable

The requirement to have all resources in a hypermedia system addressable was identified long ago in Douglas Engelbart's seminal paper (see also, An Evaluation of the World Wide Web with respect to Engelbart's Requirements). The ability to make a reference to a resource with a URL enables linking, searching, and a variety of navigation and access techniques.

Some services make information available via the web, but not addressable. For example, results of database queries using POST (rather than GET) are not addressable. A items in a catalog put on the web this way can't be linked to, and cannot participate in third-party search services. This unfortunate choice by some information providers reduces automation and scalability in the web.

It is also unfortunate that, for example, headings in HTML documents are not addressable unless they are marked up as anchors explicitly. See XML above.

On DNS

Almost all of the URL schemes used today rely on the Domain Name System. DNS is a hierarchical, administratively controlled namespace. It is essential that this namespace be held in the public trust and administered accordingly.

on URI vs. URL.

Oct 97