RFC 2655 (rfc2655) - Page 2 of 17
CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2655 CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects August 1999
1.1 History
SOIF was first defined by the Harvest project [Ref 2.] in January
1994. SOIF was derived from a combination of the Internet Anonymous
FTP Archives IETF Working Group (IAFA) templates [Ref 3.] and the
BibTeX bibliography format [Ref 4.]. The combination was originally
noted for its advantages of providing a convenient and intuitive way
for delimiting objects within a stream, and setting apart the URL for
easy object access or invocation, while still preserving
compatibility with IAFA templates.
Mic Bowman, Darren Hardy, Mike Schwartz, and Duane Wessels each
contributed to the creation of the SOIF format as part of the Harvest
Project; later work took place as part of the FIND working group.
2. Name
The index object described below will have the MIME type of
application/index.obj.HARVEST-SOIF-1.
3. Payload Format
Each summary object has 3 fundamental components: a template type, a
URL, and zero or more ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs. Because the VALUEs in
the ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs may contain arbitrary data (cf. Section
3.5), SOIF objects should be encoded in Base64 unless the template
type unambiguously establishes that the VALUEs do not contain binary
data.
3.1 Template Type
The Template type is used to identify the set of ATTRIBUTEs contained
within a particular SOIF object. SOIF does not define the template
types themselves; it only provides a way to associate the summary
object with a predefined template type name. Template types may be
registered or unregistered. Unregistered template types provide an
indication of available ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs, but these may vary
both according to the original resource and the method by which the
summary object was generated. Registered template types must refer
to a formally specified description of all mandatory and optional
ATTRIBUTE-VALUE pairs available for that type. See [10] for a
description of the process of registering template types with the
IANA.
Historically, the template types used by SOIF were derived from IAFA
template types (Ref. 3). SOIF objects generated by the Harvest system
have a "FILE" template type; in current practice this is the most
common template type. The "FILE" template type is a generic template
Hardie, et al. Experimental