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

On 2009/06/26 12:18, Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote:

> In my case, the "resource" is the concept of a host, which is the combination of a domain name, port number, and protocol used on that port. I want to be able to describe this host by saying, "this is how you transform any HTTP URI that belongs to this host to the URI of its metadata". There are plenty of ways to express this statement but so far I don't have a good way to express the subject of this statement - the host.
>
> Of course, I can come up with something like this:
>
> http://abstract.example.net/host/example.com:80:http
>
> And simply include in the protocol that the http://abstract.example.net/host/ prefix is a special case exception. But while such solutions (a URI version of a well-known location) might be acceptable for HTTP servers due to the complexity and cost of deploying changes to the infrastructure (such as a new HTTP method), they are less acceptable for URIs which can be easily extended with nothing more than a couple pages of spec...
>
> It is almost as easy to register a new URI scheme or URN namespace as it is for me to buy and maintain a new domain name. But I think in this case, the reserved domain name is a lot more offensive to web architecture than a new URI scheme or some other URI-based solution.
>
> I am also happy to make this as specific as needed for my super special use case and mint a new host: URI scheme.

This seems to indicate that 'host' is just one kind or type of thing. 
There are tons and tons of other such things. Apples, oranges, 
blueberries, just to start with. The idea that we need a new URI scheme
for every kind of data or thing that we want to talk about seems highly 
unscalable. Also, your concept of 'host' may be slightly different from 
what somebody else would think a 'host' is or has to be. Again, defining 
a 'host:' URI scheme very much looks like a non-starter. I don't exactly 
understand what you think your problem is, but I think it's a mistake to 
assume that because you have something that you can denote with almost 
the same information as available in an HTTP URI (that wouldn't be true 
for apples and oranges), it should have a scheme.

Regards,   Martin.

-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Friday, 26 June 2009 06:47:00 UTC