URN

The following is what I found about URI's the first time their definition
was questioned:

URI is  one of three acroding to
http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/CPAN/data/URI/URI.html

<scheme>:<scheme-specific-part>#<fragment>
<scheme>://<authority><path>?<query>#<fragment>
<path>?<query>#<fragment>

a URI can be a URL or a URN
a URN is  "urn:" <NID> ":" <NSS>

example URN's are in this paper.
http://earth.path.net/mitra/papers/vrml-urn.html#intro

These guys will create a URN for you
http://www.lub.lu.se/metadata/URN-help.html

URN's seem to point to a service that will return a URL.  It is a pointer or
an indirection to a URL.  That way you
can give a URN for your information that will never change no matter where
you move your information to.

There is another thing called URC Universal Resource characteristics.  This
seems to be meta-data.

Other than VRML the only other mention of non URL URI's I found was mention
of Library systems that used URN's.

Pat Hayes Wrote:

>I would welcome that. I am still trying to discover what a URI is 
>beyond simply a URL. I suspect that it is to some extent an kind of 
>W3 dream: a vision of a future where everything is on the Web and 
>everything has a single True Name which all beings will recognize. I 
>don't believe this will ever happen, for various reasons, but I would 
>like to see these matters discussed, as I think it is important to 
>get everyone's assumptions (social, semiotic, philosophical, 
>political and technical) out into the open.

Pat Emery

Received on Tuesday, 3 April 2001 16:13:58 UTC