Birth of the World Wide Web

HyperText Markup Language

Historical Perspective (HTML) allows cross-
S.No. Year Activity referencing of documents via
1. 1989 Tim Berners Lee at hyperlinks
CERN proposed 2. A Uniform Notation scheme for
hypertext based addressing web accessible
information resources over the network
management system Such scheme is called Uniform
Robert Calliau, Resource Identifier (URI) or
alongwith Tim, Uniform Resource Locator
reformatted the (URL)
proposal as World 3. A protocol for transporting
Wide Web (WWW) messages over the network
2. 1990 Berners Lee e.g. HyperText Transport
implemented a Protocol (HTTP)
server and a
command line
browser using initial The Uniform Resource Locator
version of HTTP A flexible and extensible scheme to
3. 1991 CERN made these support other protocols besides HTTP
software available
for anonymous FTP Difference between URL, URN and URI
download
4. 1993 50 different sites • URL utilize ‘locator’ information
running HTTP that embeds both a server address
servers; grew to 200 and a file location
within 6 months
5. 1993 HTTP being an • URN utilize a simpler human
onwards open specification, readable name that does not
people started change even when the resource is
writing their own moved to another location. URN
browser & server failed to materialize as a globally
software including supported web notation. So,
GUI based browsers practically, URL is used.
that supported
typographic controls • URI W3C defined it as union of
& display of images URL & URN. URI is formally
more correct.

Building Blocks of the Web

Tim devised following as essential

components of web technology.

1. A Markup Language for

formatting hypertext documents.
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 Birth of the World Wide Web
Generalized Notation for URL
scheme://host[:port#]/path/…/[;url-
params][?query_string]{#anchor]
Æ scheme – underlying protocol to be
used e.g. HTTP or FTP
Æ host - name or IP address for
the web server being accessed.
Æ port# - Port number that the target
web server listens to. Default port for
HTTP server is 80
Æ path -File System path from ‘root’
directory of the server to the desired
document. In practice, web server may
make use of aliasing to point to
documents, gateways & services that ate
not explicitly accessible from the
server’s root directory
Æ url params -Used for session
identifiers in web servers supporting the
Java Servlet API
Æ query-string - Produced as result of
user-entered variables in HTML forms.
‘=’ is used parameter-value pair and ‘&’
mark boundaries in between parameter-
value pairs.
Æ anchor - Reference to a positional
marker within the requested document
like a bookmark. If present, it follows a
hash mark or pound sign #.
[]-optional parameters
Pay attention to positions of / ; ? =
e.g.
http://www.mywebsite.com/sj/test;id=80
97?name=sviergn&x=true#stuff
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This notation applies to most protocols
like http, https & ftp
Some protocols use their own notation
e.g mailto:richr@neurozen.com
Fundamentals of HTTP
HTTP is an application level protocol in
TCP/IP protocol suite, using TCP as the
underlying transport protocol for
transmitting messages. HTTP is a basic
protocol that enables communication
between web programs.
Advantage: Simple and widely used
Disadvantage: Stateless and limited
functionality
a) HTTP protocol uses
request/response paradigm
b) The structure of request/response
consists of group of lines
containing message headers,
followed by a blank line and then
message body
c) It is a stateless protocol. HTTP
Transaction is a single request
and single response
HTTP Servers, Browsers and Proxies
Æ Web servers are essentially HTTP
servers.
Æ Web Browsers, however, are much
more than HTTP client. Usually, web
browsers also have FTP, local file
access, e-mail client, netnews, Gopher
etc. functionality as well.
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 Birth of the World Wide Web
Æ Proxies:
Æ May act as server or as a
client making requests to web server on
behalf of other clients.
Æ Enable HTTP transfers across
firewalls
Æ Support for caching of HTTP
messages
Æ filtering of HTTP requests
Æ Many other roles also
Æ Generally, there are one or
more proxies between servers and
browsers.
A connection is defined as a virtual
circuit that is composed of HTTP agents,
including browsers, servers and
intermediate proxies participating in the
exchange.
Stateless Protocol
When a protocol supports ‘state’ this
means that it provides for the interaction
between client and server to contain a
sequence of commands. The server is
required to maintain the state of
connection throughout the transmission
of successive commands, until the
connection is terminated. The sequence
of transmitted & executed commands is
often called a session.
HTTP is stateless for simplicity but
impose limitations on the capabilities of
the web application.
Lifetime of a connection is single
request/response exchange
No way to maintain persistent
information about a ‘session’ of
successive interactions between a client
and server
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No way to batch requests together – to
ask a web server for an HTML page &
all the images in references during
course of the connection
Cookies can be used for maintaining
state in web applications
HTTP/1.1 support connections that
outlive a single request/response
exchange. It assumes that connection
remains in place until it is broken, or
until an HTTP client requests that it be
broken. But it does so for the sake of
efficiency and not state support
Structure of HTTP Messages
METHOD /path-to-resource
HTTP/version-number Å--- REQUEST
LINE
Header-Name1:value
Header-Name2:value
<CR><LF>
[optional request body]
METHOD – GET, POST,…
path-to-resource – path portion of
requested URL
version-number->HTTP version used by
the client
e.g.
http://www.mywebsite.com/sj/index.html
HTTP request message will be
GET /sj/index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mywebsite.com
<CR><LF>
In case of GET request, there is no body.
HTTP/version-number status-code
message (human-readble)
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 Birth of the World Wide Web
Header-Name1:value
Header-Name2:value
<CR><LF>
[response body]

e.g.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type:text/html
Content-Length:9934
……….
……….
<HTML>
…..
…..
</HTML>

Request/Response transmission is not

that simple. Complex negotiations occur
between browsers and servers to
determine what information should be
sent. For instance, HTML pages may
contain references to other accessible
resources, such as images and applets.
Clients that support rendering of images
and applets must parse the retrieved
HTML page to determine what
additional resources are needed and then
send HTTP request to retrieve those
additional resources.

Server browser interactions are much

more complex for advanced
applications.

To be continued…

References

Web Application Architecture –

Principles, Protocols, Practices by Leon
Shklar and Richard Rosen, John Wiley
& Sons Ltd.

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