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Several groups within the IETF and IRTF have discussed the Handle System and its relationship to existing systems of identifiers. The IESG wishes to point out that these discussions have not resulted in IETF consensus on the described Handle System, nor on how it might fit into the IETF architecture for identifiers. Though there has been discussion of handles as a form of URI, specifically as a URN, these documents describe an alternate view of how namespaces and identifiers might work on the Internet and include characterizations of existing systems which may not match the IETF consensus view. AbstractThe Handle System is a general-purpose global name service that allows secured name resolution and administration over the public Internet. This document describes the protocol used for client software to access the Handle System for both handle resolution and administration. The protocol specifies the procedure for a client software to locate the responsible handle server of any given handle. It also defines the messages exchanged between the client and server for any handle operation.

Status of this MemoThis memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

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The problem of data element representation i s more extensive than most perceive. The number of standards (internal, national, and international) i s large, but the use of standards within databases i s not widespread. The result i s a significant lack of standardization both within and across databases. The result of nonstandardization becomes apparent when one attempts an exhaustive search on a particular data element in multiple databases. The journal t i t l e element was studied in eight databases, and four measures ("Number of forms of an element in a database," "Percent retrievability by element form," "Number of noncontiguous entry points in a sorted list," and "Percent retrievability by best form of an element") were developed to show the extent of standardization within a database and some of i t s implications for searching.