RFC 4156

The wais URI Scheme

📅 published August 2005, from ietf

RFC 4156: The wais URI Scheme 🎀

Okay bestie, this is RFC 4156 📜✨ It's called The wais URI Scheme, and it was written by Paul Hoffman from the VPN Consortium. It was published in August 2005 and its category is Historic 🕰️ This header doesn't have an Obsoletes or Updates line, so there's nothing it replaces or changes in this block.

Status of This Memo 💅

This memo is a Historic Document for the Internet community. It does NOT set an Internet standard of any kind, and distribution of this memo is unlimited 🫶

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).

Abstract 🦋

This doc lays out the wais Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme, which was first specified in RFC 1738. The whole point is to let RFC 1738 become obsolete while keeping the info about this scheme on the standards track. It's giving glow-up energy 💖

1. Introduction ✨

Okay so URIs were first defined in RFC 2396 [RFC2396], and then RFC 3986 [RFC3986] updated that. Both of those docs also explain how to define schemes for URIs 🧚

The first definitions for a bunch of URI schemes showed up in RFC 1738 [RFC1738]. Since that doc is now obsolete, this one copies the wais scheme over so that material can stay on the standards track. Main character energy for wais 👑

2. Scheme Definition 🎀

The WAIS URL scheme is used to point at WAIS databases, searches, or individual documents you can grab from a WAIS database 📚 The WAIS protocol is described in RFC 1625 [RFC1625]. Even though WAIS is based on Z39.50-1988, the WAIS URL scheme is NOT meant for arbitrary Z39.50 services 🙈

Historical note: The WAIS protocol was never widely implemented, and almost no WAIS servers are in use today 💀

A WAIS URL comes in one of these three forms:

wais://<host>:<port>/<database>
wais://<host>:<port>/<database>?<search>
wais://<host>:<port>/<database>/<wtype>/<wpath>

If :<port> is left out, the port defaults to 210 🍓 The first form points at a WAIS database that you can search. The second form points at one specific search. <database> is the name of the WAIS database being queried.

The third form points at one specific document inside a WAIS database that you want to retrieve. Here <wtype> is the WAIS designation for the object's type. Lots of WAIS implementations need a client to already know an object's "type" before it can retrieve it, and that type comes back along with the internal object identifier in the search response. So <wtype> gets included in the URL to give whatever client is reading the URL enough info to actually fetch the document 🫶

The <wpath> of a WAIS URL is the WAIS document-id. Treat the WAIS document-id as opaque 🔒 It can only be taken apart by the server that issued it 💜

3. Security Considerations 💀

Lots of the security considerations for URI schemes are covered in [RFC3986]. There aren't any security considerations listed in [RFC1625], but it's worth noting that the WAIS protocol specifies no privacy and no authentication. Be careful out there, bestie 😭🔥

4. Informative References 📚

[RFC1738]  Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and M. McCahill, "Uniform
           Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, December 1994.

[RFC2396]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
           Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396,
           August 1998.

[RFC3986]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
           Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
           RFC 3986, January 2005.

[RFC1625]  St. Pierre, M., Fullton, J., Gamiel, K., Goldman, J.,
           Kahle, B., Kunze, J., Morris, H., and F. Schiettecatte,
           "WAIS over Z39.50-1988", RFC 1625, June 1994.

Author's Address 🧚

Paul Hoffman
VPN Consortium
127 Segre Place
Santa Cruz, CA  95060
US

EMail: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).

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