Re: URL +1, LSID -1

Mark Wilkinson wrote:
> My understanding is that the 303 could only 
> redirect the agent to a single alternative URI.  Am I wrong?

You can either use the Accept header the client sent to choose the most 
appropriate representation to redirect to, or you can generate a proper 
response with a list of links instead of returning a Location header?


> [...] we don't even know what  the Semantic Web will look like! 

Hmmm... My guess is like the Web, but with more machine readable data? :-)


> I honestly feel we are limiting our 
> vision if we begin this journey with the perception of the SW as a set 
> of SPARQL endpoints, or a set of URIs that we want to be able to type 
> into our browsers. That may be the first step, and a way to bootstrap 
> it, but surely it's more than that.

Semantic Web crawlers and browsers are two very interesting applications 
that are already starting to surface. Both seem to work better with URLs!


> Those of us who use LSIDs use them for a reason.  Likely, that reason is 
> that they solve the atypical problems that we are faced with, in an 
> elegant and standards-body-approved manner.  I suspect that what is now 
> atypical will become the norm as the SW comes to fruition, so burning 
> bridges too early in the process is surely destructive...??  What's that 
> they say about premature optimization?
 >
> I'm all for a hybrid solution - there's no need to use LSIDs in every 
> case, but there seems to be a need to use them in *some* cases.

Well, this isn't a discussion whether to outlaw LSIDs... yet :-)