For those interested in the merits of HTTP versus new URI schemes or sub-schemes, please take a look at the following paper.
"Converting New URI Schemes or URN Sub-Schemes to HTTP", by David Booth. http://dbooth.org/2006/urn2http/ The abstract: [[ New URI schemes or URN sub-schemes are sometimes proposed for resource identification in applications where the HTTP protocol is deemed unsuitable. This paper argues that specialized HTTP URIs would be a better choice in virtually all cases, even if the resource resolution or data transfer properties of HTTP are insufficient for these applications. A simple recipe is presented for converting proposed URI schemes or URN sub-schemes to HTTP using specialized URI prefixes. This technique cleanly separates the use of the URI as an identifier (to establish resource identity) from the use of the URI as a locator (to retrieve representations). The resulting capabilities of the HTTP URIs are virtually a direct superset of those of URIs based on new URI schemes or URN sub-schemes. ]] Comments are invited. David Booth, Ph.D. HP Software [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +1 617 629 8881