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 (mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us) 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 aronson@nlm.nih.gov Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu Naomi Courter naomi@concert.net John Curran jcurran@bbn.com Peter Deutsch peterd@bunyip.com Alan Emtage bajan@bunyip.com Jill Foster jill.foster@newcastle.ac.uk Joan Gargano jcgargano@ucdavis.edu Thomas Hacker hacker@citi.umich.edu Deborah Hamilton debbie@qsun.att.com Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu J. Paul Holbrook holbrook@cic.net Ole Jacobsen ole@interop.com Edward Krol e-krol@uiuc.edu John Kunze jak@violet.berkeley.edu Clifford Lynch calur@uccmvsa.ucop.edu Janet Marcisak jlm@ftp.com Michael Mealling michael@fantasy.gatech.edu 3 Mitra mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us Charlotte Mooers mooers@nnsc.nsf.net Mark Needleman mhn@stubbs.ucop.edu Kate O'Mara kate@acfcluster.nyu.edu Pete Percival percival@indiana.edu Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu Bradley Rhoades bdrhoades@mail.mmmg.com Richard Rodgers rodgers@nlm.nih.gov Jennifer Sellers sellers@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov Jane Smith jds@jazz.concert.net Simon Spero simon_spero@unc.edu Craig Summerhill craig@cni.org Claudio Topolcic topolcic@cnri.reston.va.us Janet Vratny janet@apple.com Chris Weider clw@merit.edu Moira West mjw@cert.org Yung-Chao Yu yy@qsun.att.com 4