Recursively invoking Linnaeus: A Taxonomy for Naming Systems

Naming is a central element of a distributed or network system design. Appropriate design choices are central. This paper explores a taxonomy of naming systems, and engineering tradeoffs as an aid to the namespace designer. The three orthogonal components of the taxonomy are the characteristics of the namespace itself, name assignment, and name resolution. Within each of these, we explore a number of distinct characteristics. The position of this paper is that engineering design of naming systems should be informed by the possibilities and tradeoffs that those possibilities represent. The paper includes a review of a sampling of naming system designs that reflect different choices within the taxonomy and discussion about why those choices were made.This effort was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force Research Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command, USAF, under agreement number F30602-00-2-0553

Towards persistent resource identification with the uniform resource name

The exponential growth of the Internet, and the subsequent reliance on the resources it connects, has exposed a clear need for an Internet identifier which remains accessible over time. Such identifiers have been dubbed persistent identifiers owing to the promise of reliability they imply. Persistent naming systems exist at present, however it is the resolution of these systems into what Kunze, (2003) calls persistent actionable identifiers which is the focus of this work. Actionable identifiers can be thought of as identifiers which are accessible in a simple fashion such as through a web browser or through a specific application. This thesis identifies the Uniform Resource Name (URN) as an appropriate identification scheme for persistent resource naming. Evaluation of current URN systems finds that no practical means of global URN resolution is currently available. Two ,new approaches to URN resolution, unique in their use of the Domain Name System (DNS) are introduced. The proposed designs are assessed according to their Usability, Security and Evolution and an implementation described for an example URN namespace of language identifiers

URI, URN e URL, una questione di definizioni : universal versus uniform

This article deals with the concepts of “Uniform Resource Indicator” (URI), “Uniform Resource Names” (URN), “Uniform Resource Characteristics” (URC) and “Uniform Resource Locator” (URL). Although it is not exhaustive because of the vastness of the topic, this article aims to offer a view on the topic to anyone who works and manages with remote electronic resources (RER) in their different aspects and different points of view. The analysed documents are: RFC Request for Comments (available in the IETF Internet Engineering Task Force’s website)and some drafts drawn up by the working groups within W3C The World Wide Web Consortium

Ontologies on the semantic web

As an informational technology, the World Wide Web has enjoyed spectacular success. In just ten years it has transformed the way information is produced, stored, and shared in arenas as diverse as shopping, family photo albums, and high-level academic research. The “Semantic Web” was touted by its developers as equally revolutionary but has not yet achieved anything like the Web’s exponential uptake. This 17 000 word survey article explores why this might be so, from a perspective that bridges both philosophy and IT

A Model for Managing Information Flow on the World Wide Web

Metadata merged with duplicate record (http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/330) on 20.12.2016 by CS (TIS).This is a digitised version of a thesis that was deposited in the University Library. If you are the author please contact PEARL Admin ([email protected]) to discuss options.This thesis considers the nature of information management on the World Wide Web. The web has evolved into a global information system that is completely unregulated, permitting anyone to publish whatever information they wish. However, this information is almost entirely unmanaged, which, together with the enormous number of users who access it, places enormous strain on the web's architecture. This has led to the exposure of inherent flaws, which reduce its effectiveness as an information system. The thesis presents a thorough analysis of the state of this architecture, and identifies three flaws that could render the web unusable: link rot; a shrinking namespace; and the inevitable increase of noise in the system. A critical examination of existing solutions to these flaws is provided, together with a discussion on why the solutions have not been deployed or adopted. The thesis determines that they have failed to take into account the nature of the information flow between information provider and consumer, or the open philosophy of the web. The overall aim of the research has therefore been to design a new solution to these flaws in the web, based on a greater understanding of the nature of the information that flows upon it. The realization of this objective has included the development of a new model for managing information flow on the web, which is used to develop a solution to the flaws. The solution comprises three new additions to the web's architecture: a temporal referencing scheme; an Oracle Server Network for more effective web browsing; and a Resource Locator Service, which provides automatic transparent resource migration. The thesis describes their design and operation, and presents the concept of the Request Router, which provides a new way of integrating such distributed systems into the web's existing architecture without breaking it. The design of the Resource Locator Service, including the development of new protocols for resource migration, is covered in great detail, and a prototype system that has been developed to prove the effectiveness of the design is presented. The design is further validated by comprehensive performance measurements of the prototype, which show that it will scale to manage a web whose size is orders of magnitude greater than it is today

File-based storage of Digital Objects and constituent datastreams: XMLtapes and Internet Archive ARC files

This paper introduces the write-once/read-many XMLtape/ARC storage approach for Digital Objects and their constituent datastreams. The approach combines two interconnected file-based storage mechanisms that are made accessible in a protocol-based manner. First, XML-based representations of multiple Digital Objects are concatenated into a single file named an XMLtape. An XMLtape is a valid XML file; its format definition is independent of the choice of the XML-based complex object format by which Digital Objects are represented. The creation of indexes for both the identifier and the creation datetime of the XML-based representation of the Digital Objects facilitates OAI-PMH-based access to Digital Objects stored in an XMLtape. Second, ARC files, as introduced by the Internet Archive, are used to contain the constituent datastreams of the Digital Objects in a concatenated manner. An index for the identifier of the datastream facilitates OpenURL-based access to an ARC file. The interconnection between XMLtapes and ARC files is provided by conveying the identifiers of ARC files associated with an XMLtape as administrative information in the XMLtape, and by including OpenURL references to constituent datastreams of a Digital Object in the XML-based representation of that Digital Object.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figures (camera-ready copy for ECDL 2005

Namespaces in XML 1.1

Los espacios de nombres XML proporcionan un método simple para calificar nombres de elementos y atributos utilizados en el Lenguaje Extensible de Marcado (Extensible Markup Language), asociándolos con espacios de nombres identificados mediante referencias IRI.Second editio

IVOA Recommendation: IVOA Identifiers Version 1.12

An IVOA Identifier is a globally unique name for a resource. This name can be used to retrieve a unique description of the resource from an IVOA-compliant registry. This document describes the syntax for IVOA identifiers as well as how they are created. An IVOA identifier has two separable components that can appear in two equivalent formats: an XML-tagged form and a URI-compliant form. The syntax has been defined to encourage global-uniqueness naturally and to maximize the freedom of resource providers to control the character content of an identifier