From: ccoprmm@oit.gatech.edu (Michael Mealling)
Message-Id: <199307151820.AA02669@oit.gatech.edu>
Subject: Re: URNs in the DNS
To: M.T.Hamilton@lut.ac.uk
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 93 14:20:38 EDT
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.07.9307151702.G4919-c100000@lust>; from "Martin Hamilton" at Jul 15, 93 6:20 pm
Martin Hamilton said this:
> For the whole thing to work, it must be possible to approach
> at something like this level:
>
> 1. Given a URL I can use it to access the networked object
2. Given a URL I can find out metainformation about that object.
> 3. Given a URN I can get some URLs for it and choose the
> most appropriate one for me somehow
>
> 4. Somehow I can find out the URNs for the information I'm
> interested in
> So, just for fun, here's the alternatives for the URN->URL problem
> as far as I can see:
>
> 1. Store metadata & URN->URL mappings together
> - new technology, e.g. Registrar (+ DNS to find servers?)
I would definitly add whois++ in here since it is written to do
this exact thing.
> - existing technology, e.g. X.500, DNS
>
> 2. Store metadata in the URN or URL
> - new technology, e.g. URMs
I'm biased on this so I'll reserve comment. ;-)
> 3. Just record URN->URL mappings, no metadata
> - new technology, a URN->URL resolver (unproposed)
> - existing technology, e.g. DNS, X.500
With whois++ it's just as easy to add the metadata to a URN/URL
pair as it is anything else. I think we could do this fairly easily.
> Anybody have anything to add to this, or have I got a good
> snapshot here?
Good snapshot. I do like your idea of a "bakeoff" but I would hope we don't
all end up killing each other like in other working groups. ;-)
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