Requesting XML Records (again)

There's been a pause (about 2 months) in the
discussion on "Requesting XML records".  I've
reread the thread at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-zig/2003Mar/,
I think we achieved some degree of  consensus, and
I'd like to offer this proposal:
1. LC will register identifiers, at
www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/identifiers (e.g.
"http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/identifiers/xyz/").

2. LC will maintain a list of identifiers
registered by others.

For each identifier in the first category the
maintenance agency  would attempt to determine
rough consensus.

Identifiers in the second category must be URIs.

These identifiers may be used within the Z39.50
ESN parameter. They are not necessarily schema
identifier, nor namespace identifers (but may be).

This would not preclude development of a more
comprehensive, version 3/compspec solution, but
we're nowhere near consensus on that.

And this would change nothing about the way esns
are currently used, since there aren't any URIs
yet in use for ESNs (as far as I know) so if the
ESN takes a form other than a URI, this scheme
would not apply.

These identifiers should have associated
definitions.

For example Theo's Dublin Core Extended has
identifier
"http://www.kb.nl/persons/theo/dcx/"
an identifer, but also an actionable URI which
when clicked retrieves the definition:
"DCX stands for Dublin Core eXtended. DCX means
that the XML records are encoding according to the
DCMI guidelines and contain terms from the dc and
dcterms namespaces. The records may contain terms
from other namespaces when they could not - within
reason - be expressed by terms from the dc and
dcterms namespaces. It is recommended that as much
as possible terms from DCMI registered elementsets
are being used. "

I'll let this proposal get tossed around and
perhaps refined for a week or so before deciding
whether to put it up on the proposal page.

--Ray

Received on Monday, 2 June 2003 14:09:15 UTC