URI Patterns for Linked Data
Right Hand Patterns
Note that the example URI in the table below are for illustrative purposes. Most of the "Version 1.0" examples do access live linked-data with the particular exception of URI ending in a “#fragment”. At the time of writing all the “ With {/collection}*” examples are illustrative only.
where
-
{prefix}
substitutes for the left-hand side patterns presented in the preceding section. -
{type}
is an optional discriminator used to discriminate between reference items, reference data and vocabularies that share a common {concept} within a URI set. It may also serves as a weak ‘hint’ (NOTE: It is helpful if the values used in URI path segments can appeal to human intuitions. However, strictly URI are opaque in the sense that humans (and machines) should not expect to make accurate guesses about what a given URI identifies solely from its spelling. It is better to rely on explicit statements in content (whether narrative or in some formalism). Nevertheless, URI that giving correct intuitions to developers and end-users of the data are useful.) of the kind of thing the URI might refer to. Such ‘hint’s can be helpful to human consumers of the URI in terms of appealing to intuitions established by consistent usage. Typical token values used in the{type}field are:
**`def`** for vocabularies and terms;
**`id`** for URI sets and reference items;
**`doc`** for reference documents (and documents in general?);
**`data`** for datasets and data items;
**`so`** for spatial objects
-
{concept}
provides a human readable ‘hint’ indicating some primary concept associated with a vocabulary or a URI set or an indicative name for a dataset or subset eg. school, station, road, local-authority, bathing-water, uksi, traffic-count. -
{key}
is a field that discriminates one item from another within a URI set, vocabulary or dataset. Typical{key}values are directly derived from a natural key or coded value within the data being published. -
{/vocabulary*}
is a short multi-segment (typically single segment) component used to gather term definitions that are organised and managed together as a vocabulary (schema, codelist, concept scheme or ontology). For URI Sets, it is common for the{/vocabulary*}component(s) to be aligned with the{concept}component(s) in Identifier and Document URI associated with reference items. -
{concept}/{key}
repeating field pairs that together identify some entity and related subordinate entities eg. a road junction and exit as subordinates of a road:
../road/M5
../road/M5/junction/24
../road/M5/junction/24/exit-slip/southbound