Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to translating an identifier in a request into a data structure. In aspects, a client sends a data access request that includes a URI formatted according to the HTTP protocol. The data access request may include a request to create, change, retrieve, or delete one or more resources. The URI is received by a server that has components to translate the URI into a data structure that defines one or more resources indicated by the URI. This data structure is passed to a data source adapter that translates the data structure into operations used to access data on the data source associated with the data source adapter. There may be a plurality of data source adapters with each data source adapter structured to access data on a particular data source using the data structure to define the resources to access.