Re: RFC 2396 revision issue: Query definition

> I assumed that the query was semantically indistinguishable from the
rest
> of the path -- part of what Hrvroje said? -- how they are interpreted is
> entirely up to the software the provides access to resources for the
> indicated authority.  Anything more, I think, is just a convenient
> convention, and not bound to anything fundamental in the nature of form
of
> URI.

Not entirely; relative URIs treat path segments and query components very
differently. This indirectly suggested to me that there might be the
concept of a "located resource" which differs from the more discussed
"identified resource". Thinking about it more, I'm not at all sure that
I'm not just offering guidelines as well; the semantics are determined by
the server alone; it's just that some common conventions are provided for
making URIs more useful, especially when using them to locate something.


> E.g. I think a web server could legitimately serve *files* with names
(and
> corresponding URIs) that just happened to contain substrings that look
like
> URI query elements.

Well, a Web server can do anything it wants behind the scenes; what
matters is the interface that the URI exposes.


> Hence, in the general case, reordering of queries must be regarded as
> significant (i.e. different URIs), even though some severs may choose to
> return values that are invariant under reordering of same.

Oh, I agree completely; it's completely up to the server.