Re: Person Identifier

Bent,

On 20 Apr 2008, at 23:00, Bent Rasmussen wrote:
> I tend to favor protocol-independent URIs (URNs) because they really  
> are just identifiers and do not "age" with protocols, so to speak -  
> or worse, become misleading over time.

The problem with URNs is that applications need to be modified or  
rewritten before they can know what a URN identifies. That's quite a  
high cost, and is one of the main reasons why many URN schemes never  
caught on -- not enough developers bothered to hardcode support for  
them into existing applications.

Naming schemes that piggy-bank on HTTP don't have this problem, HTTP  
support is ubiquitous, and applications can learn that your URI  
identifies a person by making an HTTP request to retrieve a  
description of the identified thing.

For general notes on how to use HTTP URIs on the Semantic Web, see [1].

Best,
Richard

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/


>
> (Inspired by "Cool URIs dont' change")
>
> - Bent
>