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.

                                  1





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 ([email protected]) 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


                               2





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

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



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