RE: URI for abstract concepts (domain, host, origin, site, etc.)

> From: Dan Connolly [mailto:connolly@w3.org]
> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 3:01 PM

> For domains, there's a proposed standard.
> See:
> 
> Domain Name System Uniform Resource Identifiers (RFC 4501) Josefsson
> May
> 2006.
> http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4501.txt
> 
> According to that, the 1st would be:
> 
>    dns:example.com

I am not sure this is useful because it has clear semantic meaning representing a DNS record, not some abstract concept. I can't figure out what a descriptor about dns:example.com actually mean because I don't know what a description of a DNS record means (other than comments).

> I can't find any RFCs on hosts, origins, etc.
> 
> For abstract things in general, I like just
> using dynamic lookup via http:
>    http://anysite.you.can.publish.on/mydescription#host-site-whatever

How would a client know that this URI isn't for an actual HTTP resource without creating "well-known-location" URIs (option #1 in my original email)?

EHL