Question about "paths as URIs" in the BBC RDF

Hi, I have a question about something I've run across when trying to
parse the RDF coming from the BBC.  If you take a document like:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/72c536dc-7137-4477-a521-567eeb840fa8.rdf

notice how all of the URIs are paths, but there's no xml:base to
declare where these actual paths may reside.

If I point rapper at that URI, it brings me back fully qualified URIs:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/72c536dc-7137-4477-a521-567eeb840fa8#artist>

but the only way I can figure it's able to do that is for the parser
and the HTTP agent to be in cahoots somehow, which seems like a
breakdown in the separation of concerns -- this document is useless,
except in the context of living on www.bbc.co.uk.  The moment I cache
it to my local system, if I'm understanding it correctly, it's now
asserting these things about my filesystem (effectively).  Rapper now
says:
<file:///music/artists/72c536dc-7137-4477-a521-567eeb840fa8#artist>

So my questions would be:
1) Is this "valid"?
2) If so, is there an expectation of the parser being aware of the URI
of retrieval? (I have written my own set of parsers, so I'd need to
rethink this assumption, if so)
3) How do other client libraries handle this?

Thanks,
-Ross.

Received on Thursday, 28 January 2010 18:57:25 UTC