Resource Transponders

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RFC 1728                 Resource Transponders             December 1994


   4) We need to make it easy for non-experts, such as librarians,
      archivists, and database maintainers, to announce their new
      resources to the various resource location services.

   Many of these problems can be solved by a 'resource transponder'
   mechanism.

3. Resource Transponders

   The resource transponder system works by adding two new layers to
   every resource: metainformation and an agent to update a resource
   location system (RLS) with that metainformation. The metainformation
   layer is physically attached to every resource, so that when the
   resource is moved or altered, the metainformation is immediately
   available to update the RLS. The agent layer may also be attached to
   the resource or may not be; the implications of both of these options
   are discussed in detail below.

   3.1 Metainformation

   The metainformation layer of a given resource contains any
   information which might be required to create a pointer to this
   resource, and any information which may be useful for indicating how
   to catalog or index the resource.  For example, the metainformation
   layer of a text document might contain such things as the Uniform
   Resource Name (URN) of the document (this is sort of a ISBN number
   for electronic resources), the title of the document, a Uniform
   Resource Locator (URL) for the document (this is a combination net
   address and access method indicator, used for retrieval), the size of
   the document, etc. Thus the metainformation layer contains data about
   the resource to which it is attached.

   This metainformation is expected to be modifiable. For example, the
   metainformation layer may contain a history of where this particular
   copy of a resource has been.  Let's say that a resource/transponder
   pair has been moved. When it gets to its new location, the agent can
   then attempt to contact the resource at its old location to determine
   whether the resource is still there (in which case the agent will
   simply cause the new location to be added to the RLS) or whether the
   resource is not there (in which case the agent can tell the RLS to
   add the current pointer and delete the old one).

   A number of other possibilities for the contents of the
   metainformation level are contained in section 4.1.







Weider                                                          [Page 3]