Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle

On 6/17/11 12:35 PM, Dave Reynolds wrote:
>> >  If you use HTTP 200 for something different, then
>> >  you break my ability to look at a page, review it, and then
>> >  express my review in RDF,  using the page's URI as the identifier.
> Not quite. It is saying that you can't give a review for my
> http://foobar.gov.uk/datasets/population  web page because the RDF
> returned by the URI says it denotes a dataset not the web page. You can
> still review the dataset itself. You can review other web pages which
> don't return RDF data saying they are something other than a web page.

Let's look at this from a slight different angle. What does HTTP 200 OK 
mean? I believe it's how a server indicates to a client that an Address 
(it created) is functional .


I believe Tim is saying: HTTP 200 OK is integral to the Web in a general 
sense. This is behavior backed into AWWW that underlies the ubiquitous 
WWW albeit the information space dimension re., Linked Documents. An 
HTML resource is still a resource, and 200 OK doesn't care about the 
resource type.

As I stated in an earlier post, handling indirection on the server (this 
is basically what we did in our very first Linked Data server 
implementation, pre. Banff 2007) puts a burden on the clients i.e., it 
really sets an expectation that the client is willing and capable of 
doing Name and Address disambiguation by analyzing the data returned. 
Now, if an application commits 100% to self-describing data expressed in 
graph form, serialized in a variety of representations, that would work, 
but in reality this is actually worse than what we are grappling with 
right now re. paths of least resistance en route to broadening and 
accelerating Linked Data uptake. Thus, like all things, its at best just 
another option with some consequences that could ultimately compromise 
the big picture goal.


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
President&  CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen

Received on Friday, 17 June 2011 12:30:00 UTC