1. 

The user enters a URL in a web browser to access the service. The URL may 

intentionally or unintentionally give some indication as to the purpose of the resource 

identified in the URL. For example, if the service is a web based email service, a URL as 

follows may return a HTML page listing mail in the users inbox:

http://webmail.cs.tcd.ie/showInbox 

However, in most cases of services delivered via the web, the user go to a higher level 

URL that's easy to remember such as:

 http:// webmail.cs.tcd.ie

This URL may provide a general listing of the service functions formatted in HTML and 

represented as hyperlinks so that the list of functions is easy to navigate for the user. In 

the case of a web base email service these functions and the URLs they map to could be 

as follows: 

Login to mail  =>

 http://webmail.cs.tcd.ie /loginToMail

Logout of mail  => 

http:// webmail.cs.tcd.ie/logoutOfMail

Delete mail  =>

 http:// webmail.cs.tcd.ie/deleteMail

Send mail   =>

 http:// webmail.cs.tcd.ie/sendMail

Compose mail =>

 http:// webmail.cs.tcd.ie/composeMail

These are very simplified URLs in the sense that different service functions are represented 

by different resources. However it could be that different service function are accessed by 

the same resource and identified by different queries  ?  in the URL. 

For example the URLs: 

http://webmail.cs.tcd.ie/webMail?readMail 

http://webmail.cs.tcd.ie/webMail?sendMail 

Both of these URLs identify the same resource, 

/webMail

, but the query portion of the URL 

identifies to the server the function that the user wants to access. 

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