InfoMagic Standards 1994 January/InfoMagic Standards - January 1994.iso/inet/ietf/uri/92nov.min

Text File | 1993-02-17 | 8KB | 202 lines

Editor's Note:  Minutes received 12/4/92

CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_


Reported by Alan Emtage/Bunyip

Minutes of the Uniform Resource Identifiers Working Group (URI)

The Agenda for the first meeting of the URI Working Group was approved.
The Charter for the Group was reviewed and approved.  It was noted that
the ``Goals and Milestones'' may need to be changed in the future
depending on the progress in this very new area.

Peter Deutsch/Bunyip who was initially named to co-Chair the Group
resigned the position in order to follow a more activist role and avoid
any potential conflict of interest.  Jim Fullton/CNIDR was installed as
new co-Chair.  However before stepping down Peter took the opportunity
to make a few personal observations and commitments:


   o Peter has offered to co-author an overview paper along with Chris
     Weider.  This paper would propose a possible architecture to the
     Group describing the use and the form of the various Uniform
     Resource objects such as URI's (Uniform Resource Identifiers),
     URL's (Uniform Resource Locators) and URSN (Uniform Resource Serial
     Numbers) and how the would interoperate.

   o Peter gave a basic overview of his ideas about what the UR objects
     looked liked.  By his definitions:

      -  A URL identifies a particular object on the network and is
         composed of a named scheme (e.g., FTP, WAIS, Gopher) and
         information specific to that scheme.  It was noted that this
         idea already exists in a similar form in the World Wide Web
         (WWW) system, and has been codified in a paper by Tim
         Berners-Lee/CERN.
      -  A URSN can be broken down into a ``virtual user'' and an actual
         serial number.  Related topics were the issue of the
         ``producer'' of an network object and the ``owner''; some
         possible schemes for implementation of the virtual user
         (whois++ handle, X.500) ; and what the serial number would
         looked like (possibly an MD5 checksum and other methods).

     It was decided in the interests of time that further discussions
     should be carried out on the mailing list.


The paper currently titled ``Universal Resource Locators'' by Tim
Berners-Lee was reviewed and the following comments were made:


   o The use of the term ``protocol'' in the document is ambiguous given
     the context of the IETF and should be replaced or more specifically
     defined.

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o The use of the term ``name'' was considered to be unclear and again
  should be clarified.  It was suggested that it be removed and
  another term used in its place.

o The document should be written as a ``standalone'' unit.  However,
  the objects described therein should be viewed as part of a larger
  architecture and an explicit description of their purpose should be
  added.  It was suggested that the document could be further
  generalized from a _perceived_ WWW bias.

o The question of the ``partial form'' of the URL brought heated
  discussion between two factions:  one which wanted the removal of
  the form altogether and one which suggested their continued
  existence with restrictions.  Some consensus developed around the
  idea that partial forms could be used internally for individual
  information systems but should not be used when exchanged
  externally.  It was decided that further discussion should occur on
  the mailing list.

o Consensus was reached that the document should specifically state
  URLs are to be considered transient and should not be used in
  static objects (hardcopy documents, etc.).  Their use as references
  should be specifically discouraged.  Such references was considered
  to be in the domain of the URSN, whatever they ultimately look
  like.

o The paper should describe the general scheme being proposed without
  reference to particular systems (other than as examples).  All
  detailed descriptions of individual systems should be put in an
  appendix.  It was decided that the most likely repository for the
  individual definitions would ultimately be the Internet Assigned
  Numbers Authority (IANA) but that the original document may propose
  the definitions for a basic range of services (such as FTP).

o It was suggested by Thomas Hacker/UMich that to the OSF DCE DFS
  (Open Software Foundation Distributed Computing Environment
  Distributed File System).

o Mitra/Pandora ([e-mail]) proposed a ``fragment
  specifier'' scheme to be incorporated into the URL document.  It
  was decided that detailed discussion of this was best left to the
  mailing list.

o Other points were:

   -  Some of the text and examples did not agree
   -  The use of percentage signs should be reviewed on the mailing
      list.
   -  Use of blank characters was again questioned.

  All were referred back to the mailing list for further discussion


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A discussion about URI's followed.  The questions that were raised were:


  1. Given the current definitions what _exactly_ does URI mean?

       o Alan Emtage suggested that they may be defined as URI = URL +
         URSN + ``Uniform Resource Representator'' (URR) since the
         current definitions of URL and URSN do not give sufficient
         information for a user/client to determine if in fact the
         information available is useful and that such things as
         filename extensions are not a reliable method of determining
         content format (and in the case of processes is meaningless).
         However he declined to be committed on what exactly these URR's
         would look like.
       o It was suggested that the concept of the ``URI'' may be defunct
         now since it as been decomposed into several constituent parts.


  2. The proposal that John Kunze/UCBerkeley had made on the mailing
     list previously was briefly discussed and it was suggested that he
     and Clifford Lynch/UC co-author an alternate document to that
     produced by Peter Deutsch and Chris Weider, more from the
     perspective of the library community.  John's proposal for access
     lists, descriptive fields, functional types and a ``UR Citation''
     were suggested as being better handled in detail on the mailing
     list.

  3. In addition to the document describing the general UR system, Peter
     Deutsch and Chris Weider have agreed to co-author a paper proposing
     the structure of URSN's.


Attendees

Jules Aronson            [e-mail]
Jodi-Ann Chu             [e-mail]
Naomi Courter            [e-mail]
John Curran              [e-mail]
Peter Deutsch            [e-mail]
Alan Emtage              [e-mail]
Jill Foster              [e-mail]
Joan Gargano             [e-mail]
Thomas Hacker            [e-mail]
Deborah Hamilton         [e-mail]
Alisa Hata               [e-mail]
J. Paul Holbrook         [e-mail]
Ole Jacobsen             [e-mail]
Edward Krol              [e-mail]
John Kunze               [e-mail]
Clifford Lynch           [e-mail]
Janet Marcisak           [e-mail]
Michael Mealling         [e-mail]

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Mitra                    [e-mail]
Charlotte Mooers         [e-mail]
Mark Needleman           [e-mail]
Kate O'Mara              [e-mail]
Pete Percival            [e-mail]
Joyce K. Reynolds        [e-mail]
Bradley Rhoades          [e-mail]
Richard Rodgers          [e-mail]
Jennifer Sellers         [e-mail]
Jane Smith               [e-mail]
Simon Spero              [e-mail]
Craig Summerhill         [e-mail]
Claudio Topolcic         [e-mail]
Janet Vratny             [e-mail]
Chris Weider             [e-mail]
Moira West               [e-mail]
Yung-Chao Yu             [e-mail]



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