INTERNET-DRAFT C. Finseth Expires in six months U.S. Satellite Broadcasting 2 November 1998 The "eid" URL Scheme draft-finseth-eid-url-scheme-00.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." To view the entire list of current Internet-Drafts, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), ftp.nordu.net (Northern Europe), ftp.nis.garr.it (Southern Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ftp.ietf.org (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document defines a new URL scheme, "eid". This scheme provides a mechanism by which the local application can reference data that has been obtained by other, non-URL scheme means. The scheme is intended to provide a general escape mechanism to allow access to information for applications that are too specialized to justify their own schemas. Description Some computer systems have more than one mechansim for obtaining data. The data arrive at different times and use different methods for labelling the information. The "eid" ("External ID") URL schema provides a mechanism for a URL-aware application to specify the identity of this external data. The URLs are of the form: Finseth [Page 1] INTERNET-DRAFT The "eid" URL Scheme 2 November 1998 eid: The characters of the must drawn from the standard URL character set. The is interpreted in the application's environment and is meaningful only in that environment. It follows that construction of the requires knowledge of the application's environment. This schema does not specify the mechanism used to acquire the data referenced by the . It assumes that either that data is already available to the application or the contains enough information to allow the application to obtain the data. In sufficiently rich application environments there may be more than one conceptual address space. Such environments may wish to use identifiers of the form: / although any form is acceptable. Syntax eidurl := "eid:" identifier identifier := *urlchar where "urlchar" is imported from [RFC2396]. Examples One use of the eid schema would be to access data stored in application memory. In this case, the could specify a memory address. For example, if there were three fixed buffers at addresses 0x00001000, 0x00002000, and 0x00003000, they could be accessed by: eid:0x00001000 eid:0x00002000 eid:0x00003000 Another example might be an application that reads stock market quotations and stores the current values in a mini-database indexed by the ticker symbol. For example: eid:EK for Eastman Kodak Company eid:F for Ford Motor Company Finseth [Page 2] INTERNET-DRAFT The "eid" URL Scheme 2 November 1998 A third example might be a dialup application where the specifies a telephone number, login sequence, and remote command to execute. It might look like: eid:555-1212,sample_user,sample_password,sample_command Security Considerations The very nature of this schema is to provide an escape mechanism and by definition there cannot be a generic implementation of such a mechanism. Thus, many URL-aware applications will not implement this schema and so have no increased exposure. Those applications that do implement this schema will do so in application-specific ways. Hence, there cannot be an "across-the- board" exposure from this schema. However, each application that does implement this schema will have to provide its own security. References [RFC2396] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. Author's Address Craig A. Finseth U.S. Satellite Broadcasting 3415 University Ave St Paul MN 55114 Phone: +1 651-659-7162 EMail: craig@finseth.com Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implmentation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of Finseth [Page 3] INTERNET-DRAFT The "eid" URL Scheme 2 November 1998 developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. 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