A
Uniform Resource Locator (URL), commonly informally termed a
web address (which term is not defined identically) is a reference to a
web resource that specifies its location on a
computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of
Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably. A URL implies the means to access an indicated resource, which is not true of every URI. URLs occur most commonly to reference web pages (
http), but are also used for file transfer (
ftp), email (
mailto), database access (
JDBC), and many other applications.
