Virtuoso supports the URIQA (URI Query Agent) extension of HTTP WebDAV protocol. URIQA adds three new methods to HTTP in order to retrieve, add and remove RDF metadata about a given subject. The subject is identified by its URI. If the subject is a DAV resource then URIQA will usually reuse the DAV URI of the resource. If the subject is not a resource but something else (physical entity, imaginary thing or vocabulary item) then URIQA can be used to process metadata about the subject even if the subject itself can not be accessed via HTTP.

URIQA-specific HTTP methods are called MGET (to retrieve existing metadata), MPUT (to add or update RDF triples) and MDELETE (to remove some or all triples). A single URIQA request usually deals with a single subject that is specified by request URI. The MGET response, however, can return metadata about more than one RDF subject, e.g., the request about a book can return both data about the book itself plus some data about persons who are known as authors of the book.

In addition to URIQA-specific HTTP methods, Virtuoso implements a semantic web service interface that allows plain HTTP clients to access metadata using traditional GET or POST HTTP methods.

The Virtuoso URIQA implementation allows flexible configuration using an ordered list of request handlers. Every handler has a pattern for URIs; if the URI in the request does not match the pattern then the handler is ignored, otherwise a callback function of the handler is called to process the request. The default configuration of Virtuoso server will try three sorts of actions.

	Note:
	URIQA is not yet a stable standard. Virtuoso implements draft of URIQA proposal from Nokia, dated 2004. As URIQA will evolve, future versions of Virtuoso will implement updated versions of the specification. There is no warranty that future implementations will be compatible with the current one.

	See Also: External References
	The Nokia URI Query Agent Model