Protocol Considerations for Web Linkbase Access

We propose the Open Web, which aims at transforming the Web into an Open Hypermedia System. Based on the Extensible Linking Language (XLink), we investigate the possibilities for implementing linkbase access methods. Linkbases are collections of so-called third-party links, which are links which live outside the resources that they are linking, and thus must be found and retrieved somehow when presenting the resources that they are linking. We focus on the protocol issues of accessing linkbases, concentrating on how such a new protocol could and should be designed. In addition to our design goal of specifying a protocol for accessing the linkbase Web service, be believe that our protocol considerations can serve as a blueprint for other areas where Web access to services is required.