Zepheira launches community site for PURL Software
FREDERICKSBURG, Virginia, USA, 20 May 2008-Zepheira, LLC announced today that they have launched a community Web site for the Open Source Persistent URL (PURL) software.
The new community site at purlz.org is intended to become a focal point for further development of the PURL software. The site provides access to mailing lists, coordinated bug reporting, a forum for feature requests and community discussions, documentation and access to the software.
Zepheira redesigned and built an updated PURL service during 2007-08 to support greater flexibility, new features and the scalability to face an increased demand for PURLs. The new service provides an upgrade of the software running at purl.org.
The PURL software has been released under an Open Source license, the Apache License version 2.0. The license allows PURLs and the PURL infrastructure to be used in various applications for public or proprietary use.
Zepheira is actively supporting the community site to bring together operators of PURL services and introduce them to the features of the updated PURL software.
The PURL service has been hosted by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) for 12 years and provides persistent, stable World Wide Web (WWW) addresses for the international library and education community, government, business, and non-profit organizations, and private citizens. PURLs are Web addresses or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that act as permanent identifiers in the face of a dynamic and changing Web infrastructure.
Instead of resolving directly to Web resources, PURLs provide a level of indirection that allows the underlying Web addresses of resources to change over time without negatively affecting systems that depend on them. This capability provides continuity of references to network resources that may migrate from machine to machine for business, social or technical reasons. PURLs grew out of the long involvement of OCLC's Office of Research with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Uniform Resource Identifier working groups.
The new PURL features more effectively support the management of a "Web of data." New features include the ability to create different types of PURLs, and support the latest best practices developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). PURLs now have direct support for Semantic Web data. PURLs now provide the ability to permanently identify networked information resources, such as Web documents, as well as non-networked resources such as people, organizations, concepts and scientific data.
"The flexibility and permanence of PURLs lower the bar to information reuse across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. The PURL community site provides an important central area were end users, developers and architects from all industry verticals can come together to share ideas and help in the development and deployment of an open, foundation technology for enabling a 'Web of Data," said Eric Miller, President, Zepheira.
Zepheira is pleased to provide PURLs as a core component of the Internet infrastructure, to increase the flexibility and stability of Web-based applications and services. More information on the PURL service is available on the PURL Community Web site: purlz.org.
About Zepheira
Zepheira is a US-based professional services firm with expertise in semantic technologies and Enterprise Data Integration. Zepheira delivers solutions worldwide to integrate, navigate and manage data across personal, group and enterprise boundaries. Zepheira performs business analysis, data architecture, application development and implementation. Zepheira's experts have a long history of leading Internet standards initiatives, and delivering solutions to industries including manufacturing, financial services, medical research and defense. The company is privately held and has offices in Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. For more information, visit: zepheira.com.
