Re: Graph-State Resources (was Re: graphs and documents Re: [ALL] agenda telecon 14 Dec)

On 14 December 2011 21:31, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:

> Any ideas for a better term?

"Web Service"? "HTTPResource"? HTTPOrHTTPSMaybeGopherFTPTooResource"?
It is a Web Service really, but the word is already rather busy with
other duties.

I'm wary of suggesting that the "Resource" in "Resource Description
Framework" now means anything more technically-specific than "Thing".
We've spent a long time trying to clarify that.

The old HTTP-NG work, which tried to wrap a distributed objects layer
around HTTP and other browser-accessible protocols, used 'WebDocument"
- http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-HTTP-NG-interfaces/ and nearby.

Let's call this notion 'Thingy' for purpose of the next paragraph.

If I have two physically linux boxes A and B, wired up to be part of
the Web using round-robin DNS so that two separate hard drives / CPUs
etc are serving up a common identical set of content, and
http://example.com/something1 will 50% of the time serve from A, 50%
serve from B. Lots of Web sites in practice serve using more
sophisticated variants on this pattern.

Are we clear that in our story, there is just one "Thingy'? by virtue
of the concept being focussed on its public name, rather than
possibly-evolving internals. Since we know about the mechanics inside,
we might be tempted to say there are two thingies, ... but that slips
away from the central idealisation here. We act in the Web like we're
talking to some unified service, which will tell us "it's state". In
practice the details are rarely that clear.

Anyhow, WebResource I can live with. I prefer not to use any phrase
with "Information Resource" inside it, like "Web Accessible
Information Resource", since it suggests we've clarified what an
"information resource" amounts to.  Michael Buckland's essay at
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/whatdoc.html does a fine
job of showing we're in good company for not having figured all this
out yet...

cheers,

Dan

Received on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 21:12:26 UTC