Openly Accessing Linkbases

In this paper, we investigate the requirements for linkbase access on the Web. The recent advancements of Web technologies (XML, XLink, and XPointer) have brought us one step closer to the vision of using the Web as an Open Hypermedia System (OHS). However, some of the pieces to make this work are still missing, and this paper discusses which they are and the status of the current work in these areas. Concentrating on one of these pieces, the access to linkbases, the paper than continues by describing the prerequisites and requirements of such an access mechanism, and closes with a list of requirements and design principles that we will use in a next step to specify and implement a linkbase access protocol.