# Re: OCLC's URN Services Proposal

Dirk.vanGulik (Dirk.vanGulik@jrc.it)
Wed, 14 Jun 1995 11:05:40 +0200

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    Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 11:05:40 +0200

    From: "Dirk.vanGulik" <Dirk.vanGulik@jrc.it>

    Message-Id: <9506140905.AA25356@ jrc.it>

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: Re: OCLC's URN Services Proposal

> As a (more or less :-) neutral party, I'm working with Ron to try to put
> together the "stone soup party" revision of the URN bakeoff. I know of
> all the URN proposals that have been discussed on the list. Is there
> anyone else out there that's working on a URN proposal that hasn't been
> announced? For that matter, is there anyone out there that's no longer
> working on a URN proposal that has been announced :-)

Yep, we, (http://www.ceo.org) are working on several things at the same
time; we are a bit limited in publication until the official release in
two weeks time. But here is a short overview:

- Each URN (white page, yellow page, ...) is defined/described by an IAFA
or Aliweb record. Part of the information contained in this record,
is a URI/URL, admin-address, date and some other goodies. See AliWeb
at http://www.nexor.co.uk for more details on those records

- So to us a URN is an uniqe resource identifier; *what* is identified
is described in a record. Some resources might not have a URI, URL
or internet-reachable address.

- The entity which attaches a URN to the AliWeb record is assuming both
the naming authority as well as primary resolving resposibility. This
entity can also be the owner of the information/resource which is
described by the record and pointed at by the URI, or a third party,
which just made the aliweb record public.

- A URN cannot change; only become obsoleted or extinct. The URI and
other information in the record can by modifed at any time. The resolving
authority is not resposible for the content; only for the 'public'ness.
The creator of the aliwebrecord is responsible for the content. Each
record has to contain those two responsible names and addresses.

- The URN can appear in two ways:
<urn:x-dns-2:resolving-host-dns-name:some-id-string>
or, in the intermediate period as a URL:
http://resolving-host:4500/some-id-string

- A URN resolver sitting on port 4500 talks to the world using an http
like protocol.

- An 'accept' of html will result in a URI forwarding
page being send, i.e completely transparent resolving without the
user noticing it at all ! As a quick hack, appending (.html)
to the above URL or (.full) allows some html views on the actual
contents and intermediate resolving results

- Various other accept types allow more advandced resolving; with
the aliweb records, real searching, etc.

And finaly, our aim:

- The CEO, the Center of Earth observation of the European Communities
aims, among other things, to set up a European wide service exchange,
a yellow and white pages system aimed at the remote sensing community.

- Our URN 'resources' include things like events, scientific programmes,
universites, institutes, archives, people, consultancies and about
two dozen more :-)

I am in the process of writing a number of internetdrafts and fyi detailing

- various aspects of those Aliweb records; compulsory fields, etc.
- refining various field descriptions for phone, lat/lon, country etc
- the URN to URI auto-forwarding using html-status-'has-moved' pages
- the URN to AliWeb record resolving

And about finished:

- making avaible a perl/mSQL based resolver, which allows third parties
to gather their own aliweb records and have their own resolver.

Just to keep you informed !

Dirk-Willem van Gulik

Refs:
InternetDraft: Publising Information with anonymous FTP
InternetDraft: URN resolution overview
InternetDraft: Generic URN syntax
InternetDraft: urc0: Trivial URC syntax
InternetDraft: x-dns-2 URN scheme
RFC 1737, 1590

http://me-www.jrc.it/~dirkx http://ceo-www.jrc.it
DWvGulik@Dialis.xs4all.nl Dirk.vanGulik@jrc.it
+39 332 78 1322 +39 332 78 9549
fax +39 332 78 9185

ISEI/ESBA; The Center For Earth Observation
Joint Research Centre of the European Communities, Ispra, Italy

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- Maybe in reply to: weibel@oclc.org: "OCLC's URN Services Proposal"
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