Referencing in the Web

• The Web as a whole is greater than the sum of the parts
  • the Web’s power is achieved by the connection of related information
  • uni-directional linking using location-based addressing (URLs)
• System lacks referential integrity and migration transparency
  • referenced resources are deleted
  • resources move around (both intra and inter-server)
  • resulting in broken-links or dangling references
• Proposed solutions
  • HTTP redirect directive (HTTP code 302)
  • Persistent URLs (PURLs) from OCLC
  • Uniform Resource Names (URNs)
  • Hyper-G’s p-flood - broadcast updates using flooding technique