RE: Comments on Working Draft 5 July 2004 - URI Overloading

Hello again Renato,

I think you have hit upon a key distinction about our use of terms that Pat
Hayes makes in his comments earlier in this archive [1]. 

The language around concepts of identity and reference seem to be quite
tricky to get right. Pat observes that we use a collection of terms in two
different senses. In one sense which he calls 'C' (for computational, at
least that's how I remember it) we speak of identity and reference of
computational objects (information resource) and the notion of identity is
very much bound to the operationalised procedures associated with accessing
the referenced computational object. The second sense, which Pat calls 'D'
(for denotational, I presume) where URI are being used as names to name
things, real-world things, concepts and abstractions... but not necessarily
to access them or retrieve representations.

IMO the extract from 2.4 which you quote only makes sense if read in Pat's
'D' sense, where the URI is being used to denote something rather than as a
key to access an information resource.

Wrt to reassignment or reuse of a URI to a different resource (C-sense).
That's not something we'd seek to encourage - "Cool URI don't change" [2]
being the mantra. Indeed there is at least one philosophical viewpoint that
would say it's not possible - a resource being defined by its complete state
history over time... the resource just isn't what you thought it was in the
first place.

Anyway... bottom line I think that your comment resonates with Pat's
comments [1] and I hope resolution of Pat's comments in due course would
address this one as well.

Thanks,

Stuart
--
[1]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webarch-comments/2004JanMar/1057.
html
[2] http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-webarch-comments-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-webarch-comments-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of 
> Renato Iannella
> Sent: 9 July 2004 03:37
> To: public-webarch-comments@w3.org
> Subject: Comments on Working Draft 5 July 2004 - URI Overloading
> 
> 
> In section "2.4. URI Overloading" it says:
> 
> "Suppose, for example, that one organization makes use of a 
> URI to refer to the movie "The Sting", and another 
> organization uses the same URI to refer to a discussion forum 
> about "The Sting."
> 
> Its not clear *how* these two different organisations can 
> use/allocate/assign the *same* URI to different resources at 
> the same time?
> 
> I think it may be more clearer to talk about re-assiging the 
> same URI to different resources.
> That is, the same organisation assigns a URI to the movie "The Sting" 
> and if they don't want to
> do this anymore, should not then reuse that same URI for 
> other resources.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Renato Iannella
> http://renato.iannella.it
>

Received on Friday, 9 July 2004 06:06:37 UTC