Referent is a fancy word meaning "what". In other words,
what resource does the client want?
IMPORTANT! Note that every ContextObject MUST contain one and only one Referent. This should be your starting point when thinking about how the Transport should map HTTP requests into ContextObjects. The clearer you can articulate the "what" entity, the easier it will be for programmers to code the service, and clients to understand its purpose.
Consider, however, the fact that the descriptors in a ServiceType in one request could appear within a Referent in another. For example, I could pass in a Service identifier as a Referent or as a ServiceType, depending on whether I want information about the service, or to invoke the service respectively.
@author Jeffrey A. Young