A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories. Title : The ARK Identifier Scheme http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-kunze-ark-16.txt Author(s) : John A. Kunze R. P. C. Rodgers Filename : draft-kunze-ark-16.txt Pages : 44 Date : 2012-04-02 The ARK (Archival Resource Key) naming scheme is designed to facilitate the high-quality and persistent identification of information objects. A founding principle of the ARK is that persistence is purely a matter of service and is neither inherent in an object nor conferred on it by a particular naming syntax. The best that an identifier can do is to lead users to the services that support robust reference. The term ARK itself refers both to the scheme and to any single identifier that conforms to it. An ARK has five components: [http://NMAH/]ark:/NAAN/Name[Qualifier] an optional and mutable Name Mapping Authority Hostport (usually a hostname), the "ark:" label, the Name Assigning Authority Number (NAAN), the assigned Name, and an optional and possibly mutable Qualifier supported by the NMA. The NAAN and Name together form the immutable persistent identifier for the object independent of the URL hostname. An ARK is a special kind of URL that connects users to three things: the named object, its metadata, and the provider's promise about its persistence. When entered into the location field of a Web browser, the ARK leads the user to the named object. That same ARK, inflected by appending a single question mark (`?'), returns a brief metadata record that is both human- and machine- readable. When the ARK is inflected by appending dual question marks (`??'), the returned metadata contains a commitment statement from the current provider. Tools exist for minting, binding, and resolving ARKs. A URL for this Internet-Draft is: http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-kunze-ark-16.txt Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at: ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/ This Internet-Draft can be retrieved at: ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-kunze-ark-16.txt _______________________________________________ I-D-Announce mailing list I-D-Announce@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce Internet-Draft directories: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt
