Some reference definitions

After last week's Advanced Collections teleconference, I took on the action
item to draft some new definitions for Redirect References and Direct
References.  Since the status of Direct References is still under discussion
among the authors,  I've included a few possible definitions for Direct
References.

CURRENT SEMANTICS:

Referential Resource (or Reference):

A resource which acts as a reference to another resource, and that has
property state and no state that may be used to create a GET entity body.
There are two types of referential resources, redirect references and direct
references.

Redirect Reference:

A reference which acts as a reflector, informing the client it must access
another URL to resolve the request.

Direct Reference:

A reference that is resolved by the server without any client action, giving
the client the illusion it is operating directly on the target resource.


PROPOSED SEMANTICS:

Redirect Reference:

A reference which acts as a reflector, informing the client it must access
another URL to resolve the request.  A redirect reference is a resource that
has property state and no state that may be used to create a GET entity
body.

Direct Reference:

A reference that is resolved by the server without any client action, giving
the client the illusion it is operating directly on the target resource.  A
direct reference is a member URI of a collection decorated with additional
qualities of the reference.  A direct reference is not a resource, and does
not have property state, or state that may be used to create a GET entity
body.  A direct reference is anologous, but not identical, to a symbolic
link in file systems.

Binding:

A binding is a mapping of a URI to a resource.  When a protocol request is
made to a URI, a server resolves a URI to a resource that fulfills the
request. A binding between a URI and a resource instructs a server to
resolve the URI to the resource.  A binding has no state beyond that
required to store the mapping.  A binding is not a resource.  A binding is
analogous, but not identical to a hard link in file systems.

- Jim

Received on Monday, 5 April 1999 20:24:21 UTC