Dear folk, For the past two years I've been casually searching for an XML format for describing computer files that I could use for creating catalogs of files for backup purposes. Such a format seems to me to be a very important tool for making, duplicating and sharing vendor-independent file systems, as well as cataloging. The child-elements/attributes of such a "file" element might be "name", "description", "MIME-Content-Type", "size-in-bytes", "access-permissions", "date-created", "date-modified", etc. A companion XML format for describing folder/directory trees would enable the description of complete file systems. There already exist several models/precursors for this XML format and I'll quickly discuss them. Historically, MIME has provided Internet file description. Although its syntax is archaic, its "Content-Type" enumeration is useful and other of its fields could be carried over to XML elements/attributes. Eric Burger pointed out that MIME and its 'external-body' provide a very compact way to describe files, although I feel that XML's elegance make up for its extra syntax. He wondered whether someone had already done a general file description XML format. My search continued. Magnus Westerlund drew my attention to FLUTE/RFC3926's file description format which uses MIME field names as XML attributes (eg: "Content-Type") although it uses "Content-Length" instead of MIME's "Size". But he seemed to warn that this format could not be applied generally. Miguel Garcia and Marcin Matuszewski in the SIPPING group have designed a 'file-metadata' XML format published at http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-garcia-sipping-file-event-package- 00.txt. Eric Burger warned that this design was very SIP-specific. However, could it or FLUTE/RFC3926 possibly be the foundation for a more general design/format? The SemanticWeb is slightly over my head, but I believe that the DublinCore/RDF is aimed at describing the general document/media-resource.. it therefore seems vague when describing the computer file (for instance, its element "extent" can contain the size-in-bytes or duration of a resource). However, could DublinCore/RDF possibly be that foundation? So we seem to have formats that are either too specialized or too general. I wonder whether it is possible or useful to design a general file description XML format. Does it already exist? Or should I design a personal format for the singular needs of a file backup program? Trace Bond Vancouver, Canada _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf