RFC 2655 (rfc2655) - Page 2 of 17

CIP Index Object Format for SOIF Objects

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