# Re: URCs and IAFA templates

Martijn Koster (m.koster@nexor.co.uk)
Thu, 13 Oct 1994 09:23:43 +0100

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    Message-Id: <9410130824.AA29657@mocha.bunyip.com>

    To: sallyh@Ludwig.intel.com (Sally Hambridge)

    Subject: Re: URCs and IAFA templates

    In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 30 Sep 1994 13:47:35 PDT."             <9409302047.AA21757@Ludwig.intel.com>

    Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 09:23:43 +0100

    From: Martijn Koster <m.koster@nexor.co.uk>

> IAFA Folks: We on the URI list see relation between IAFA
> templates and URCs.

Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com> asked us about this
a while back:

bajan@bunyip.com (Alan Emtage) wrote in reply:

| > Does anyone want to conjecture the likely relationship between URCs
| > and IAFA templates?
|
| It has been sort-of assumed that the data elements defined within IAFA
| would be used in URCs if in fact these kind of data element names were
| used. I don't think that we can say more than that. Certainly the syntax
| of the larger structures (templates) would be in appropriate since these
| things are in part expected to be constructed by humans and thus don't
| conform to the strictures required for a true protocol.

I myself replied:

) Overall it seem the IAFA templates are more descriptive and geared to
) users deciding about applicability (yellow-pages style), and URC's
) are more for automatic use in a lookup/resolution service for specific
) objects.
)
) There are some parsing differences between IAFA and the current URC
) spec:
) - there seems to be no whitespace between field and value,
) - URI's are used in IAFA, URL's etc are used in URC's.
) - In URC's fields have precedence rules, and it seems that a "UR" line
) must be followed by relevant extra fields. This is not so in
) IAFA.
)
) Other than that, I think the URC and IAFA records have similarites
) that can be taken advantage of by indexing software. Similarly, a URC
) service could analyse IAFA templates to create intial databases.
)
) I suggest that when extra URC fields become required, equivalent IAFA
) ones are used.
)
) IAFA cannot "include" URC's because of the parsing problems mentioned
) above. Of course individual data elements can be added.
)
) The IAFA templates draft does not rely on non-RFC documents, and is
) rather static. The URC's are still very much in a research stage. I
) think it'd be a mistake to try and incorporate them ito the IAFA
) templates, but I expect future URC RFC's might eventually replace
) IAFA, either as spec, or simply by usage. Then again, maybe not.

I must admit though I'm behind on the URC's...

> Since we are beginning to move forward with the URC draft,

We are also getting very close to a new IAFA draft...

> would it be useful to discuss the templates in that light? Perhaps
> set up a test environment which would produce some positive
> discussion and get us all moving forward?
>
> Any other suggestions for pooling these and trying to get
> everything to work together? (What a conecpt!)

If both IAFA and URC's have similar data elements, and parseable
formats, then interworking should be easy :-)

-- Martijn
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