Glossary · Packages and variants

iiRDS ZIP archive

Also known as: .iirds file, iiRDS archive, delivery ZIP

In iiRDS (intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard), an iiRDS ZIP archive is the standard implementation of an iiRDS container as a ZIP file with the extension .iirds. Its first entry must be an uncompressed file named mimetype containing application/iirds+zip.

iiRDS term
Ontology
Information architecture

In one sentence

An iiRDS ZIP archive is the .iirds file that carries a package: a ZIP whose first, uncompressed entry declares the MIME type application/iirds+zip.

Example

The file machine-x200_en.iirds, uploaded by a machine builder to a customer's content delivery portal, which detects the format from the mimetype entry without unpacking it.

How it applies

Format rules: Every application that processes iiRDS must support the ZIP archive. File and directory names are UTF-8 encoded; files are stored uncompressed or with "Deflated" compression; ZIP64 is required above 4 GB or 65,536 entries; and the archive must not be encrypted.
Detection: Because the mimetype file comes first and uncompressed, a system can identify an iiRDS package by reading the first bytes — the same approach used by EPUB.
Supply chain: The archive is the unit of exchange between iiRDS Generators and iiRDS Consumers — from authoring system to portal, or from supplier to machine builder. Unrestricted packages may nest other archives; iiRDS/H packages may not.
AI and ingestion: One file per delivery, with metadata and content together, is an easy unit to version, verify with a checksum and load into a retrieval index.

ZIP archive vs. package

The Package is the information unit described in the metadata. The ZIP archive is the physical file that carries it.