comparison of metatada approaches

• From: Kenji Takahashi <kt@nttlabs.com>
• Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 14:16:05 -0800
• To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
• cc: kt@nttlabs.com, masinter@parc.xerox.com, yarong@mirosoft.com
• Message-Id: <199611132216.OAA23962@alicia.nttlabs.com>

Please let me confirm whether I correctly follow the discussion...

[Larry]
Metadata are independent resources and transmitted by using Link (header?) 
and MIME multipart.

Advantages
(1) This makes use of existing approaches and does not need to change 
current URI framework. 
(2) By using MIME multipart, this approach can send a content and its 
metadata at once.
(3) This can manipulate metadata independently of corresponding contents

- Disadvantages
(1) It is an extra work to manage the relationships between the URIs of 
contents and corresponding metadata.  (In the other approaches, the URI
of metadata are systematically determined or is not neccessary).

[Yarong]
Metadata are independent resources and transmitted by using enhanced URI..

- Advantages
(1) This can manipulate metadata independently of corresponding contents

- Disadvantages
(1) This violates a priciple of URI - URI should be opaque.
(2) This approach cannot send contents and attributes at once. 

[Kenji]
Metadata are a part of resources and sent as a part of HTTP headers with
options.

- Advantages
(1) This approach can send a content and its metadata at once.

- Disadvantages
(1) This cannot lock, copy, delete, etc  metadata independently of contents.

[Questions]
(1) What are metadata?  Link headers are not metadata?  Should we treat other headers,
e.g. Last-modified, as metadata or not?  

Kenji

Received on Wednesday, 13 November 1996 17:16:25 UTC