Patent ID: 7440953

Claim:
A method of using a computer to access a source, comprising: allocating space in a storage facility for a source; making a location of the allocated space addressable and accessible over a communications network; storing the source to the allocated space; generating a unique, persistent, and universal name identifier associated with the source; effecting the registration of the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier with an address associated to a location where the source is stored in a database for resolving unique, persistent, and universal name identifiers and locations of associated sources, wherein the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier is unique in the database; receiving metadata for the universal name identifier, wherein the metadata provides descriptive data regarding the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier; associating the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier with the metadata so that the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier and metadata can be identified by each other; registering metadata in a metadata database before effecting the registration of the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier in one phase of a multi-phase registration commitment; generating an error if the metadata fails to register in the metadata database; registering the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier in the database in another phase of a multi-phase registration commitment; generating an error if the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier fails to register in the database; validating that the source at the location is accessible in yet another phase of a multi-phase registration commitment; generating an error if the validation fails; and failing to register the unique, persistent, and universal name identifier if any phase of the multi-phase commitment generates an error.