Common Naming prototype

Nearby: Common Naming Project

Approach taken in the Common Naming prototype: The URIs begin http://purl.org/commons/. (We will probably decide that a separate domain name is needed, although to exploit the redirect and authorization services at purl.org, the new domain name might end up just pointing to purl.org.)

Example: http://purl.org/commons/record/ncbi_gene/1003064

When a URI of this form is accessed, purl.org does a 302 redirect to a script at Science Commons, which then does a 303 to a script-generated page that documents the intended use of the URI, and links to encodings of the database record.

The provisional URIs have the form http://purl.org/commons/type/database/key, where:

• 'database' is a short name for the database (there is no registry but anticipate that there will be one)
• 'type' may be record (the database record without commitment to representation), xml (an XML version of the record), html, or occasionally the type of the thing described (e.g. 'article' for journal articles)
• 'key' is usually the native key or identifier for the particular record within its database

Provisional URIs coined so far are described below.

These URIs seem to be catching on, so although we say they are experimental, we may be shamed into saying that they are the real thing. The choice of type/databank as opposed to databank/type is one point of doubt. Their documentation leaves much to be desired.

The specific 'xml', 'html', 'asn' etc. URIs forward directly to pages on various servers. The 'record' URI leads to a page generated by a Neurocommons server. It does not lead to the record itself, but rather gives (via a 303 redirect) a basic description of the record and a suite of useful links, including links to the specific record encodings and to third-party information sources (such as scripts providing RDF renderings of the records). This meta-page is (or rather will be) provided in both RDF and human-readable form.

Specific URIs