Uniform Resource Locator

A Uniform Resource Locator, or URL (pronounced as "earl" (SAMPA: [@rl]) or
spelled out), is a standardized address for some resource (such as a
document or image) on the Internet. First created by Tim Berners-Lee for use
on the World Wide Web, the currently used forms are detailed by IETF
standard RFC 2396 (1998).

The URL was a fundamental innovation in creating the World Wide Web. It
combines into one simple address the four basic items of information
necessary to find a document anywhere on the Internet:

   * The protocol to use to communicate with that machine
   * The machine or domain name to go to
   * An open network port on the target machine connected to some service
   * The path or file name on that machine

A typical simple URL can look like:

   http://www.informationheadquarters.com:80/Countries

where

   * http specifies which protocol to use.
   * //www.informationheadquarters.com specifies the domain name to contact.
   * 80 specifies the network port number of the remote machine. Under most
     circumstances, this portion may be omitted entirely. In the case of the
     http protocol the default value is 80.
   * /Countries is the request path on the specified system.

Most Web browsers do not require the user to enter "http://" to go to a web
page. One usually just enters the page name (without the slashes) such as
www.informationheadquarters.com/Countries/United_States.shtml. To go 
to the homepage one usually just enters
the domain name such as www.informationheadquarters.com

HTTP URLs can also contain additional elements, like a query string (placed
after the path and separated from it by a question mark (?)) containing
information from a HTML form with method=get, or a name tag (placed after
the path and separated from it by a sharp mark (#)) giving the location
within a hypertext page to display. FTP URLs often contain a port number.

examples:

 http://www.informationheadquarters.com/update.cgi?title=Train&action=history
 http://www.informationheadquarters.com/Transpertation/Train#Model_railways

URLs are one type of URI.

The term URL is also used outside the context of the World Wide Web.
Database servers specify URLs as a parameter to make connections to it.
Similarly any Client-Server application following a particular protocol may
specify a URL format as part of its communication process.

Example of a database URL :

 jdbc:datadirect:oracle://myserver:1521;sid=testdb

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