Uniform Resource Characteristics (urc) -------------------------------------- Charter Last Modified: 06/05/2000 Current Status: Concluded Working Group Chair(s): Rich Petke Mark Madsen Applications Area Director(s): Ned Freed Patrik Faltstrom Applications Area Advisor: Ned Freed Mailing Lists: General Discussion:urc@list@gatech.edu To Subscribe: listproc@list.gatech.edu In Body: subscribe urc Your Name Archive: ftp://ftp.gatech.edu/pub/urc/archives Description of Working Group: Uniform Resource Characteristics (URCs) are descriptions, such as bibliographic or configuration control records, of Internet-accessible resources. Particular communities expend considerable effort to develop descriptions that are appropriate for their resources. Many of these descriptions are notable more for their commonalties and their gratuitous differences than for their necessary, community-specific, distinctions. These resource descriptions are of interest to the IETF because Internet applications that make use of such descriptions display a need for at least three forms of interoperability. The first is for separately-developed applications to exchange descriptions that conform to a commonly-agreed description scheme. The second is to translate descriptions from one scheme to another with minimum loss of information. The third is for two applications that use the same descriptive scheme but different transfer protocols to exchange descriptions with the aid of a gateway. To provide these forms of interoperability, the URC-WG is chartered to standardize the framework for a family of descriptive datatypes known as URC subtypes. The framework will specify: 1) The structure of the datatypes and a minimal query capability, as well as the rules for mapping the datatypes and queries to and from at least two record formats. 2) The conveyance of those record formats in well-established Internet transfer protocols. 3) At least two syntaxes for defining new datatypes. 4) The semantics of a very small number of descriptive elements, such as URL and Content-type, that are needed for retrieving resources over the network, are appropriate for all URCs to utilize, and are within the domain of IETF standards. In order to demonstrate all the forms of interoperation, the URC-WG is also chartered to standardize a small number of particular URC subtypes, and a small number of realizations of the URC framework in well-established Internet transfer protocols. Goals and Milestones: JUN 96 Submit Internet-Draft of Canonical URC Representation and realization in at least one record format. JUL 96 Submit Internet-Draft on conveying URC records in a well-established Internet transfer protocol. AUG 96 Submit Internet-Drafts of first two URC subtypes. SEP 96 Revise Canonical representation Internet-Draft to account for experiences during implementation of subtypes. OCT 96 Demonstrate interoperability between separately-developed implementations of same URC subtype. DEC 96 Submit Internet-Draft on conveying URCs in a second transfer protocol. JAN 97 Demonstrate gateway between two or more transfer protocols. APR 97 Obtain WG consensus on documents and submit to IESG for publication as RFCs (Proposed Standard or Experimental). Internet-Drafts: No Current Internet-Drafts. Request For Comments: None to date.