Application of UriGraph to Uniform Resource Identifier Design

UriGraph is a Web site structure model that specifies identity, identifier, position and composition of each resource constituting the Web site. This paper presents the application of resources identifier model (a subset of UriGraph) to Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) design. The URI technology is essential to the Web, and exposure of URIs to the user makes it a major – although often overlooked – part of the Web user interface. The process of assigning specific URIs to resources on the Web site and thinking up rules for mapping URI subspaces to classes of resources has become known as the URI design. The paper lists requirements and gives recommendations for URI design in general, and for multilingual Web sites in particular. A case study illustrates the proposed approach. Introduction Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) design is lesser known discipline of the Web information architecture, although it is a very important aspect of Web usability and functionality. The goal of this paper is to contribute to the field, theoretically (attempting to formulate definitions and identify the use cases and requirements) as well as practically (giving recommendations and proposing a new model for designing URIs). The paper describes the design only of some URIs, primarily those in "http" scheme, which are the most important for the Web. Similar principles can be extended to other of URI schemas, but URIs are so generally defined that it is hard to establish many universal principles. The paper is organized as follows. The next section defines the cornerstone terms of the paper, especially "resource" and "URI", as well as the need for designing URI. Section titled "URI design" lists the use cases for URIs, followed by a list of requirements and recommendations for URI design. The following section describes the UriGraph model in brief, with more detailed look at the resources identifier model. A case study illustrating the use of UriGraph in URI design of author's own Web site follows. The paper ends with the conclusion and a list of references. Web resources and identifiers Resources The current standard on Uniform Resource Identifiers [r ] defines the term very widely: "A resource can be anything that has identity." Another important standard that has the word "resource" in its name, the Resource Description Framework [ ] says: "All things being fc2396