ANSI/NISO Z39.88-2004

The OpenURL Framework Standard defines an architecture for creating OpenURL Framework Applications. An OpenURL Framework Application is a networked service environment, in which packages of information are transported over a network. These packages have a description of a referenced resource at their core, and they are transported with the intent of obtaining context-sensitive services pertaining to the referenced resource. To enable the recipients of these packages to deliver such context-sensitive services, each package describes the referenced resource itself, the network context in which the resource is referenced, and the context in which the service request takes place.

This Standard specifies how to construct these packages as Representations of abstract information constructs called ContextObjects. To this end, the OpenURL Framework Standard defines the following core components: Character Encoding, Serialization, Constraint Language, ContextObject Format, Metadata Format, and Namespace. In addition, this Standard defines Transport, a core component that enables communities to specify how to transport ContextObject Representations. Finally, this Standard specifies how a community can deploy a new OpenURL Framework Application by defining a new Community Profile, the last core component.

This Standard defines the OpenURL Framework Registry and the rules that govern the usage of this Registry. The OpenURL Framework Registry contains all instances of all core components created by communities that have deployed OpenURL Framework Applications. This Standard defines and registers the initial content of the OpenURL Framework Registry, thereby deploying two distinct OpenURL Framework Applications.