Re: ISSUE-49 (are graphs information resources?)

The question of how the clarifications I proposed addresses the ISSUE as
currently worded came up in today's teleconference.  This is my attempt to
describe this and give my input as to an appropriate response to the recent
comment on this issue [1]:

[[[
The TAG provides *advice* to the community that they may mint "http" URIs
for any resource provided that they follow this simple rule for the sake of
removing *ambiguity* (agreed on 15 Jun 2005)" [2]
]]] 

The emphasis is mine - the first indicating that (as far as I know)
http-range-14 is advice from the TAG not a W3C recommendation and it is not
clear what the procedure is regarding dependencies between REC track
documents and TAG findings - maybe the chairs, team contacts, etc. can
clarify.  The second emphasis indicates that http-range-14 is meant to
address ambiguity about what is (essentially) the denotation of a URI as a
result of interacting with it over HTTP.  Given the clarifications I
proposed (which included a clear(er) distinction between graphs, their
documents, and networked RDF knowledge), including:

[[[
Following the terminology in [AWWW], the intuition here is that messages in
this HTTP protocol use graph IRIs to access the underlying graph store.  The
graph IRIs identify networked RDF knowledge.  Networked RDF knowledge is
distinguished from other kinds of (information) resources by the fact that
they are primarily represented by an RDF document and these RDF documents
are serializations of RDF graphs in the underlying graph store.
]]]

I'm not sure where there is still ambiguity since it is clear what graph
URIs 'refer' to - we have a name for it, we have described its role in the
protocol, defined it to be a special kind of IR, and how it can be
interacted with over HTTP.

HTTP Update says "The HTTP GET method SHOULD be used to retrieve a graph
representation of the networked RDF knowledge identified by the
Request-URI." 
 
So, the response *should* include a 200 status since (by definition) RDF
networked knowledge is an IR that is *primarily* represented by an RDF
document, however, even if it returned 303 - no additional distinction can
be determined (per http-range-14).  Interactions with the protocol via graph
URIs target networked RDF knowledge rather than graphs (hopefully this is
clearer), so the question of whether an RDF graph is an IR is not relevant.

[1]http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg-comments/2010Apr/0001
.html
[2]http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/issues.html#httpRange-14

-- Chime


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Received on Tuesday, 27 April 2010 15:12:46 UTC