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rfc:rfc2655

Network Working Group T. Hardie Request for Comments: 2655 Equinix Category: Experimental M. Bowman

                                                               Transarc
                                                               D. Hardy
                                                               Netscape
                                                            M. Schwartz
                                                          Affinia, Inc.
                                                             D. Wessels
                                                                  NLANR
                                                            August 1999
              CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects

Status of this Memo

 This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
 community.  It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
 Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
 Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved.

1. Abstract

 The Common Indexing Protocol (CIP) allows servers to form a referral
 mesh for query handling by defining a mechanism by which cooperating
 servers exchange hints about the searchable indices they maintain.
 The structure and transport of CIP are described in (Ref. 1), as are
 general rules for the definition of index object types.  This
 document describes SOIF, the Summary Object Interchange Format, as an
 index object type in the context of the CIP framework.  SOIF is a
 machine-readable syntax for transmitting structured summary objects,
 currently used primarily in the context of the World Wide Web.
 Query referral has often been dismissed as an ineffective strategy
 for handling searches of Web resources, and Web resources certainly
 present challenges not present in structured directory services like
 Rwhois.  In situations where a keyword-based free text search is
 desired, query referral is not likely to be effective because the
 query will probably be routed to every server participating in the
 referral mesh.  Where a search can be limited by reference to a
 specific resource attribute, however, query referral is an effective
 tool.  SOIF can be used to create such a known-attribute query mesh
 because it provides a method for associating attributes with net-
 addressable resources.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 1] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

1.1 History

 SOIF was first defined by the Harvest project [Ref 2.] in January
 1994.  SOIF was derived from a combination of the Internet Anonymous
 FTP Archives IETF Working Group (IAFA) templates [Ref 3.] and the
 BibTeX bibliography format [Ref 4.].  The combination was originally
 noted for its advantages of providing a convenient and intuitive way
 for delimiting objects within a stream, and setting apart the URL for
 easy object access or invocation, while still preserving
 compatibility with IAFA templates.
 Mic Bowman, Darren Hardy, Mike Schwartz, and Duane Wessels each
 contributed to the creation of the SOIF format as part of the Harvest
 Project; later work took place as part of the FIND working group.

2. Name

 The index object described below will have the MIME type of
 application/index.obj.HARVEST-SOIF-1.

3. Payload Format

 Each summary object has 3 fundamental components: a template type, a
 URL, and zero or more ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs.  Because the VALUEs in
 the ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs may contain arbitrary data (cf. Section
 3.5), SOIF objects should be encoded in Base64 unless the template
 type unambiguously establishes that the VALUEs do not contain binary
 data.

3.1 Template Type

 The Template type is used to identify the set of ATTRIBUTEs contained
 within a particular SOIF object.  SOIF does not define the template
 types themselves; it only provides a way to associate the summary
 object with a predefined template type name.  Template types may be
 registered or unregistered.  Unregistered template types provide an
 indication of available ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs, but these may vary
 both according to the original resource and the method by which the
 summary object was generated.  Registered template types must refer
 to a formally specified description of all mandatory and optional
 ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs available for that type.  See [10] for a
 description of the process of registering template types with the
 IANA.
 Historically, the template types used by SOIF were derived from IAFA
 template types (Ref. 3). SOIF objects generated by the Harvest system
 have a "FILE" template type; in current practice this is the most
 common template type.  The "FILE" template type is a generic template

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 2] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

 type meant to handle a large variety of web-based resources.  No
 formal specification of it is available, though a list of ATTRIBUTE-
 VALUE pairs common to the "FILE" template type is found in Appendix
 A.  "DOCUMENT" and "OBJECT" are other generic template-types.
 The use of unregistered template types obviously presents some
 problems to the correct operation of query referral.  Two efforts
 have been mounted to allow peer-to-peer agreement on the association
 of template types with specific attribute sets: Netscape's RDM (Ref.
 6) and the STARTS project (Ref. 7).  Initially, CIP meshes based on
 systems which use unregisterested template types may need to use
 these or similar methods to associate template types with specific
 attribute sets.
 Mesh operators are strongly encouraged, however, to migrate to
 registered template types as soon as is practical.  Registered
 template types allow CIP meshes to derive the definitions of
 attributes, which enables multiple-language interfaces to the base
 attributes.  In addition, registered template types allow CIP meshes
 and other users of SOIF to establish the permitted data types and
 encodings of the VALUEs associated with each ATTRIBUTE.  This makes
 deriving the appropriate matching semantics for a particular VALUE
 much more straightforward and eliminates the limitations of the
 default octet-by-octet matching (cf. Section 4.).

3.2 URL

 Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) (Ref 5.) are used by SOIF as object
 IDENTIFIERs.  SOIF associates its summary objects with net-
 addressable resources by using the URL by which the resource was
 addressed as the initial field of the object body.  See section 3.4
 for the formal grammar associated with SOIF objects.
 This association allows the same resource to have multiple summary
 objects, differentiated only by the URL by which the resource was
 accessed.  This possibility does not, however, impact the usability
 of the URL as an object IDENTIFIER. Furthermore, since it can be
 argued that the net address is a salient part of the metadata, there
 may be compensating benefits to using the URL as an object
 IDENTIFIER.
 As noted in Appendix A, the Harvest project used several additional
 identity attributes ("Gatherer-Name", "Gatherer-Host", "Gatherer-
 Port" and "Gatherer-Version") to further identify the provenance of a
 particular object.  Within the context of CIP, it may be useful to
 identify the base sources of particular index objects; see Appendix B
 for one example of how a SOIF-based CIP hint could use the base
 source URL.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 3] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

3.3 ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs.

 Each summary object has zero or more ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs, which
 contain metadata about the net-addressable resource referenced by the
 URL.  Pairs are composed of an ATTRIBUTE IDENTIFIER, the length of
 the VALUE, a delimeter, and the VALUE.  It should be stressed that
 ATTRIBUTE VALUE pairs are not CR/LF terminated, but parsed according
 to grammar set out in section 3.4.  In the examples in Section 3.6
 and in many other representations of SOIF objects, ATTRIBUTE-VALUE
 pairs are represented on individual lines to enhance readability.
 VALUEs may contain CR/LF, however, and implementors must be careful
 to parse the full VALUE.  Implementors of SOIF parsers MUST ignore
 <CR>,<LF>,<TAB>,<SPACE>, or other whitespace found between the VALUE
 of an ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pair and the ATTRIBUTE-IDENTIFIER of the
 subsequent pair.
 The SOIF syntax does not explicitly allow for a single ATTRIBUTE to
 have multiple VALUEs.  To handle multiple VALUEs for the same
 ATTRIBUTE, SOIF uses an ATTRIBUTE naming convention; a hyphen and
 positive integer are appended to the ATTRIBUTE name to create an
 ATTRIBUTE IDENTIFIER VALUE associated with a specific ATTRIBUTE.  For
 example, the ATTRIBUTE IDENTIFIERs "Author-1", "Author-2", and
 "Author-3" can be used to represent three VALUEs associated with the
 ATTRIBUTE "Author" where a specific resource has three authors.  See
 section 4 for the implications of this strategy on matching
 semantics.

3.4 SOIF Grammar

 The SOIF syntax is defined by the following grammar:
    SOIF            ::=  OBJECT SOIF |
                         OBJECT
    OBJECT          ::=  @ TEMPLATE-TYPE { URL ATTRIBUTE-LIST }
    TEMPLATE-TYPE   ::=  IDENTIFIER
    ATTRIBUTE-LIST  ::=  ATTRIBUTE ATTRIBUTE-LIST |
                         ATTRIBUTE |
                         NULL
    ATTRIBUTE       ::=  IDENTIFIER {VALUE-SIZE} DELIMITER VALUE
    URL             ::=  RFC1738-URL-Syntax | "-"
    IDENTIFIER      ::=  ALPHA-NUMERIC-STRING
    VALUE           ::=  ARBITRARY-DATA
    VALUE-SIZE      ::=  NUMERIC-STRING
    DELIMITER       ::=  ":<TAB>"

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 4] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

3.5 Grammar Description

 URL
    a Uniform Resource Locator encoded in the syntax defined by RFC
    1738 [3].  If the summary object has no URL associated with it,
    then a Latin-1 hyphen (octal \055) is used instead.
 IDENTIFIER
    an ASCII character string that only contains alphanumeric
    characters and hyphens or underscores.  IDENTIFIERs should avoid
    including hyphens followed by positive integers except when
    constructing multiple-VALUE ATTRIBUTE IDENTIFIERs.
 VALUE
    a buffer of VALUE-SIZE octets containing the VALUE.  The VALUE may
    contain data in arbitrary formats or encodings, which recipients
    recognize based on Template-Type.
 VALUE-SIZE
    a non-negative integer encoded as an ASCII character string.  The
    integer indicates how many octets the VALUE occupies after the
    DELIMITER.
 DELIMITER
    a two octet delimiter which is a Latin-1 colon (:) and a tab (\t),
    (octal \072\011).
 { }  the Latin-1 curly braces (octal \173 and \175) are used to wrap
    the VALUE-SIZE (no spaces) as well as the URL and ATTRIBUTE-LIST
    combination.
 @TEMPLATE-TYPE
    the Latin-1 @ (octal \100) and TEMPLATE-TYPE (no space between
    them) is used to mark the beginning of the SOIF object.
 NUMERIC-STRING
    Zero or more ASCII numerals.
 ALPHA-NUMERIC-STRING
    Zero or more ASCII letters or numerals, plus hyphens or
    underscore.  [a-z,A-Z,0-9,- and _].
 ARBITRARY-DATA
    Octets of data in arbitrary formats or encodings.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 5] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

4. Matching Semantics

 As was discussed in Section 1, query referral of SOIF objects will be
 most effective when a query identifies a particular ATTRIBUTE or set
 of ATTRIBUTEs as the target of the query match.  A query-identified
 ATTRIBUTE should be considered to match a SOIF ATTRIBUTE when a
 case-insentive character-by-character comparison matches that portion
 of the ATTRIBUTE IDENTIFIER prior to any hyphen-integer suffix.  For
 example, a query which asks for a match on the ATTRIBUTE "author"
 should match the IDENTIFIERs "author", "Author", "AUTHOR", and
 "Author-1".  [10] discourages the registration of template types
 containing ATTRIBUTEs which have previously been registered with
 substantially different definitions.  This will help eliminate mis-
 referral, but a CIP mesh may nonetheless need to maintain a thesaurus
 matching ATTRIBUTEs from particular template-types to those of other,
 especially unregistered, template-types.
 The matching semantics appropriate for a particular VALUE are derived
 from its data type and encoding.  For VALUEs associated with
 ATTRIBUTEs which are part of a registered template type, the data
 type and encoding are readily available.  For VALUEs associated with
 ATTRIBUTES associated with unregistered template-types, an octet-by-
 octet comparison is the default.  In cases where previous experience
 has demonstrated that a particular ATTRIBUTE contains string data, a
 case-insensitive substring match may be used.  For example, in a
 query against the "AUTHOR" ATTRIBUTE of the generic "DOCUMENT"
 template type, the query VALUE "Garcia" should match the SOIF VALUEs
 "Garcia", "GARCIA", and "Jose Garcia y Montes".
 Over time, there may well emerge an understanding of which attributes
 tend to produce correct query referrals within a mesh.  As such
 understandings emerge, mesh maintainers may wish to define a
 particular SOIF TEMPLATE-TYPE which restricts included ATTRIBUTES to
 those likely to foster correct referrals.

5. Internationalization

 The internationalization of SOIF depends on the registration of
 template-types.  Since TEMPLATE-TYPEs and ATTRIBUTE IDENTIFIERs must
 be in ASCII characters, only languages which use the ASCII character
 set are fully supported for unregistered TEMPLATE-TYPEs.  For
 registered template types, in contrast, the specification of an
 ATTRIBUTE's definition will allow UI designers to present a native-
 language mapping of the ATTRIBUTE to the end user.  Further, the
 inclusion of data type and encoding information in the description of
 VALUEs means that any language encoding or character set required by
 a particular application may be supported.  For unregistered template
 types, the ability of peer servers to pass schema definitions may

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 6] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

 provide a form of "private registration" which could provide some of
 the facilities for internationalization available to registered
 template types.  (See above, section 3.1 and Refs. 6 and 7.)

6. Example Summary Objects

 The appendices contain example summary objects encoded using specific
 template types.  The following are some example summary objects using
 the generic "DOCUMENT" SOIF template-type:
 @DOCUMENT { http://home.netscape.com:80/
 Title{19}:  Welcome to Netscape
 Content-Type{9}:    text/html
 Content-Length{5}:  33262
 }
 @DOCUMENT { http://home.netscape.com/eng/ssl3/ssl-toc.html
 Title{19}:  SSL Protocol V. 3.0
 Content-Type{9}:    text/html
 Content-Length{5}:  5870
 Author-1{14}:   Alan O. Freier
 Author-2{14}:   Philip Karlton
 Author-3{14}:   Paul C. Kocher
 Abstract{318}:  This document specifies Version 3.0 of the
 <B>Secure Sockets Layer (SSL V3.0)</B> protocol, a security
 protocol that provides communications privacy over the Internet.
 The protocol allows client/server applications to communicate in
 a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, or
 message forgery.
 }
 @DOCUMENT { http://www.nissanmotors.com/1996/300ZX/pictures/300zx.jpg
 Content-Type{10}:    image/jpeg
 Content-Length{5}:  25940
 Last-Modified{31}:  Tuesday, 11-Jun-96 19:18:44 GMT
 Thumbnail{259}:     ..................
 }

7. Security

 Please see (Ref. 1) for a general discussion of Security concerns for
 the CIP framework.
 SOIF currently contains no requirement that any template type contain
 an authentication ATTRIBUTE.  SOIF summary objects lacking
 authentication ATTRIBUTEs must, therefore, be treated as unreliable
 indicators of the referenced resource's content.  A hostile party
 could create a summary object which significantly misrepresented a

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 7] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

 resource's content.  As part of a CIP mesh, this data could either
 channel a large number of requestors to a resource (possibly
 resulting in a denial of service) or away from a resource (possibly
 resulting in a loss of appropriate visibility).

8. References

 [1]  Allen, J. and M. Mealling, "The Architecture of the Common
      Indexing Protocol (CIP)", RFC 2651, August 1999.
 [2]  The Harvest Information Discovery and Access System:
      <URL:http://harvest.transarc.com/>.
 [3]  D. Beckett, IAFA Templates in Use as Internet Metadata, 4th
      Int'l WWW Conference, December 1995,
      <URL:http://www.hensa.ac.uk/tools/www/iafatools/>
 [4]  L. Lamport, LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, Addison-
      Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1986.
 [5]  Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L. and M. McCahill, "Uniform Resource
      Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, December 1994.
 [6]  D. Hardey, Resource Description Messages (RDM), W3C Note-rdm-
      960724, July 24, 1996, <URL:http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/NOTE-
      rdm.html>
 [7]  L. Gravano, K. Chang, H. Garcia-Molina, C. Lagoze, A. Paepcke,
      STARTS: Stanford Protocol Proposal for Internet Retrieval and
      Search, January 1997, <URL:http://www-
      db.stanford.edu/~gravano/starts.html>
 [8]  S. Weibel, J. Kunze, C. Lagoze, Dublin Core Metadata for Simple
      Resource Description, Work in Progress.
 [9]  E. Miller, Dublin Core Element Set Crosswalk, January 1997,
      <URL:http://www.oclc.org:5046/~emiller/DC/crosswalk.html>
 [10] Hardie, T., "Registration Procedures for SOIF Template Types",
      RFC 2656, August 1999.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 8] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

9. Authors' Addresses

 Ted Hardie
 Equinix
 901 Marshall Street
 Redwood City, CA 94063 USA
 EMail: hardie@equinix.com
 Mic Bowman
 Transarc Corporation
 The Gulf Tower
 707 Grant Street
 Pittsburgh, PA 15219 USA
 Phone: +1 412 338 4400
 EMail: mic@transarc.com
 Darren Hardy
 Netscape Communications Corp.
 685 E. Middlefield Road
 Mountain View, CA 94043 USA
 Phone: +1 415 937 2555
 EMail: dhardy@netscape.com
 Mike Schwartz
 Affinia, Inc.
 621 17th Street, Suite 1700
 Denver, CO 80293
 Phone: +1 (303) 292-4818
 E-mail: mfs@affinia.net
 Duane Wessels
 National Laboratory for Applied Network Research
 Phone: +1 303 497 1822
 EMail: wessels@nlanr.net

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 9] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

Appendix A.

 Common Attributes for "FILE" Template-type Summary Objects created by
 Harvest:
 Abstract
    Brief abstract about the object.
 Author
    Author(s) of the object.
 Description
    Brief description about the object.
 File-Size
    Number of bytes in the object.
 Full-Text
    Entire contents of the object.
 Gatherer-Host
    Host on which the Gatherer ran to extract information from the
    object.
 Gatherer-Name
    Name of the Gatherer that extracted information from the object.
    (eg. Full-Text, Selected-Text, or Terse).
 Gatherer-Port
    Port number on the Gatherer-Host that serves the Gatherer's
    information.
 Gatherer-Version
    Version number of the Gatherer.
 Update-Time
    The time that Gatherer updated the content summary for the object.
 Keywords
    Searchable keywords extracted from the object.
 Last-Modification-Time
    The time that the object was last modified.
 MD5
    MD5 16-byte checksum of the object.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 10] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

 Refresh-Rate
    The number of seconds after Update-Time when the summary object is
    to be re-generated.  Defaults to 1 month.
 Time-to-Live
    The number of seconds after Update-Time when the summary object is
    no longer valid.  Defaults to 6 months.
 Title
    Title of the object.
 Type The object's type. Some example types are:
       Archive
       Audio
       Awk
       Backup
       Binary
       C
       CHeader
       Command
       Compressed
       CompressedTar
       Configuration
       Data
       Directory
       DotFile
       Dvi
       FAQ
       FYI
       Font
       FormattedText
       GDBM
       GNUCompressed
       GNUCompressedTar
       HTML
       Image
       Internet-Draft
       MacCompressed
       Mail
       Makefile
       ManPage
       Object
       OtherCode
       PCCompressed
       Patch
       Perl
       PostScript

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 11] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

       RCS
       README
       RFC
       SCCS
       ShellArchive
       Tar
       Tcl
       Tex
       Text
       Troff
       Uuencoded
       WaisSource
 Update-Time
    The time that the summary object was last updated.  REQUIRED
    field, no default.
 URL-References
    Any URL references present within HTML objects.

Appendix B.

 Proposed Attributes for a "CIP-HINT" Template Type
 Attribute-Identifier-List
    A comma-delimited list whose entries take the form Template-
    Type:Attribute .  This list identifies the attributes against
    which queries are supported.  Because of the current limitation on
    Identifiers, this list must be in ASCII.
 Source
    The URI of the service which created some or all of the index
    objects to which this hint applies.  Note that this service may be
    and often is distinct from the server which provides query access
    to those objects.
 Total-Object-Count
    The total number of index objects in the collection for which the
    Hint applies.  This should be a positive integer.
 Weightlist-[Attribute-Identifier]
    This construction allows the HINT to contain a weighted list of
    values for a specific Attribute-Identifier.  There may be as many
    Weightlist entries as there Attribute-Identifiers in the
    Attribute-Identifier-List.  Each Weightlist entry takes the form
    of Value;Object-Count, where the object count is a positive
    integer representing the number of objects within the collection
    which contain that value. Weightlists are comma- delimited.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 12] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

    Should a Value contain a comma, it should be escaped when
    incorporated into the weightlist.
 Threshold-[Attribute-Identifier]
    If a server wishes not to report infrequently occurring Values in
    a specific Weightlist, it may declare a threshold under which it
    will not report Values.
 Certification-Type
    The type of Certification used for this object
 Certification
    The Value of the Certification.
 Date
    The Date at which the hint was generated
 Example:

@CIP-HINT{ http://nic.nasa.gov:80/Harvest/brokers/NASA/ Attribute-Identifier-list{49}: DOCUMENT:Author, DOCUMENT:Keywords, IMAGE:Subject Source-1{45}: http://nic.nasa.gov/Harvest/gatherers/Eureka/ Source-2{46}: http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/NTRS/ Total-Object-Count{5}: 10000 Weightlist-[IMAGE:Subject]{40}: Shuttle;100, Planet;227, Moon;15, Sun;33 Threshold-[IMAGE:Subject]{2}: 10 Weightlist-[DOCUMENT:Author]{49}: Grizzard;12, Aldrin\, Buzz;15, Aldrin\, James;45, Threshold-[DOCMENT:Author]{1}: 5 Certification-Type{13}: PGP-Signature Certification{51}: mQCNAzFNm5QAAEEALUBOolOWKpby+=YtmtBxUZWQgSGFyZGllID Date{29}: Sun, 05 Jan 1997 08:33:33 GMT }

Appendix C.

 A "Dublin-Core" Template Type [Ref. 8,9]
 TITLE
    The name given to the resource by the CREATOR or PUBLISHER.
 CREATOR
    The person(s) or organization(s) primarily responsible for the
    intellectual content of the resource.  For example, authors in the
    case of written documents, artists, photographers, or illustrators
    in the case of visual resources.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 13] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

 SUBJECT
    The topic of the resource, or keywords or phrases that describe
    the subject or content of the resource.  The intent of the
    specification of this element is to promote the use of controlled
    vocabularies and keywords.  This element might well include
    scheme-qualified classification data (for example, Library of
    Congress Classification Numbers or Dewey Decimal numbers) or
    scheme-qualified controlled vocabularies (such as Medical Subject
    Headings or Art and Architecture Thesaurus descriptors) as well.
 DESCRIPTION
    A textual description of the content of the resource, including
    abstracts in the case of document-like objects or content
    descriptions in the case of visual resources.  Future metadata
    collections might well include computational content description
    (spectral analysis of a visual resource, for example) that may not
    be embeddable in current network systems.  In such a case this
    field might contain a link to such a description rather than the
    description itself.
 PUBLISHER
    The entity responsible for making the resource available in its
    present form, such as a publisher, a university department, or a
    corporate entity.   The intent of specifying this field is to
    identify the entity that provides access to the resource.
 CONTRIBUTOR
    Person(s) or organization(s) in addition to those specified in the
    CREATOR element who have made significant intellectual
    contributions to the resource but whose contribution is secondary
    to the individuals or entities specifed in the CREATOR element
    (for example, editors, transcribers, illustrators, and convenors).
 DATE
    The date the resource was made available in its present form.  The
    recommended best practice is an 8 digit number in the form
    YYYYMMDD as defined by ANSI X3.30-1985. In this scheme, the date
    element for the day this is written would be 19961203, or December
    3, 1996.  Many other schema are possible, but if used, they should
    be identified in an unambiguous manner.
 TYPE
    The category of the resource, such as home page, novel, poem,
    working paper, technical report, essay, dictionary.  It is
    expected that RESOURCE TYPE will be chosen from an enumerated list
    of types.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 14] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

 FORMAT
    The data representation of the resource, such as text/html, ASCII,
    Postscript file,  executable application, or JPEG image.  The
    intent of specifying this element is to provide information
    necessary to allow people or machines to make decisions about the
    usability of the encoded data (what hardware and software might be
    required to display or execute it, for example).  As with RESOURCE
    TYPE, FORMAT will be assigned from enumerated lists such as
    registered Internet Media Types (MIME types).  In principal,
    formats can include physical media such as books, serials, or
    other non-electronic media.
 IDENTIFIER
    String or number used to uniquely identify the resource.  Examples
    for networked resources include URLs and URNs (when implemented).
    Other globally-unique identifiers,such as International Standard
    Book Numbers (ISBN) or other formal names would also be candidates
    for this element.
 SOURCE
    The work, either print or electronic, from which this resource is
    derived, if applicable. For example, an html encoding of a
    Shakespearean sonnet might identify the paper version of the
    sonnet from which the electronic version was transcribed.
 LANGUAGE
    Language(s) of the intellectual content of the resource.  Where
    practical, the content of this field should coincide with the NISO
    Z39.53 three character codes for written languages.
 RELATION
    Relationship to other resources.  The intent of specifying this
    element is to provide a means to express relationships among
    resources that have formal relationships to others, but exist as
    discrete resources themselves.  For example, images in a document,
    chapters in a book, or items in a collection.  A formal
    specification of RELATION is currently under development.  Users
    and developers should understand that use of this element should
    be currently considered experimental.
 COVERAGE
    The spatial locations and temporal durations characteristic of the
    resource.    Formal specification of COVERAGE is currently under
    development. Users and developers should understand that use of
    this element should be currently considered experimental.

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 15] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

 RIGHTS
    The content of this element is intended to be a link (a URL or
    other suitable URI as appropriate) to a copyright notice, a
    rights-management statement, or perhaps a server that would
    provide such information in a dynamic way.  The intent of
    specifying this field is to allow providers a means to associate
    terms and conditions or copyright statements with a resource or
    collection of resources.   No assumptions should be made by users
    if such a field is empty or not present.
 Example:

@Dublin-Core-1 { ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/

               draft-kunze-dc-00.txt

TITLE{52}: Dublin Core Metadata for Simple Resource Description CREATOR-1{9}: S. Weibel CREATOR-2{8}: J. Kunze CREATOR-3{9}: C. Lagoze SUBJECT{44}: The Dublin Core Set of Elements for Metadata DESCRIPTION{46}: Reference description of Dublin Core elements. PUBLISHER{31}: Internet Engineering Task Force CONTRIBUTOR-1{11}: Nick Arnett CONTRIBUTOR-2{15}: Eliot Christian CONTRIBUTOR-3{14}: Martijn Koster CONTRIBUTOR-4{18}: Christian Mogensen CONTRIBUTOR-5{14}: Timothy Niesen CONTRIBUTOR-6{11}: Andrew Wood CONTRIBUTOR-7{10}: Mic Bowman CONTRIBUTOR-8{11}: Dan Connoly CONTRIBUTOR-9{15}: Michael Mauldin CONTRIBUTOR-10{12}: Wick Nichols DATE{16}: February 9, 1997 TYPE{14}: Internet draft FORMAT{4}: Text IDENTIFIER:{21} draft-kunze-dc-00.txt SOURCE{41}: http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core LANGUAGE{3}: eng RELATION{24}: Draft Reference Standard COVERAGE{22}: Expires August 8, 1997 RIGHTS{58}: Unlimited Distribution;

              readers must not cite as standard.

}

Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 16] RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999

11. Full Copyright Statement

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 This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
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Acknowledgement

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Hardie, et al. Experimental [Page 17]

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