RE: URI equivalence, URI's for "standard" identifiers

For a broad range of the entities mentioned by Eric (ISBNs, ISSNs, and all
the related identifiers of information in the intellectual property sense)
there is some existing work.  The DOI initiative (www.doi.org) is a URN
implementation which focusses on intellectual property objects.  It is
designed to be compatible with use of identifiers like ISBN, ISSN, ISRC, etc
in the non-Web world and enable these to be used as legacy identifiers.
Separately, the ISSN International centre are protyping a URN implementation
of ISSN using a resolution tool specific to ISSN. Logically the same
approach would work with patent numbers, UPC codes etc.

This issue will be discussed at the forthcoming Paris meeting of all the
existing identification schemes for such intellectual property entities
(next month) to discuss common issues and aim at consensus and
interoperability.   Daniel La Liberte is attending this for W3C.  

We can (and probably should, given some apparent differences of opinion)
discuss whether these identifiers are called URNs or URIs and what the
distinction is, but this is the topic for a separate list (uri@w3.org); W3C
is considering an activity on this but has decided not to launch this yet
(see e-mail from Tim B-L to W3C AC 12 Jan)

The URN registration process seems to be capable of dealing with this in
concept, but probably needs to mean something more practical to folks if its
going to have these registrations used meaningfully. 


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Sussna [mailto:jeff.sussna@quokka.com]
Sent: 19 January 2000 19:15
To: 'Eric Hellman'; RDF Interest Group
Subject: RE: URI equivalence, URI's for "standard" identifiers


I believe the answer is to use URN's. I don't believe, however, that
specific URN namespaces for things like ISBN etc have yet been formally
defined and/or registered.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Hellman [mailto:eric@openly.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2000 10:10 PM
To: RDF Interest Group
Subject: URI equivalence, URI's for "standard" identifiers


Forgive me if I've missed something obvious, but...

Is there any consensus in the RDF community about what URI's to use 
for standard identifiers such as ISBN, ISSN, UPC codes, or for things 
like Stock tickers, cusips, patent numbers? It's not like it would 
take much effort.


Assuming the answer is "not yet", I'd like to suggest a rather 
fundamental addition to RDF core properties. It seems to me that 
everyone should at least agree how to say that two URI's refer to the 
same thing.

In other word, we need a universal property to be able to make the 
assertion that resource X is equivalent to resource Y. Something like:

   <?xml version='1.0'?>
   <rdf:RDF
      xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
      xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/PR-rdf-schema-19990303#"
      >

   <rdf:Description ID="equivalent">
     <rdf:type 
rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property"/>
     <rdfs:comment>This property expresses the equivalence of 2 
resources.</rdfs:comment>
  </rdf:Description>

Example:

<rdf:Description
about="http://linkbaton.com/get?genre=book&item=0062515861">
	<equivalent 
rdf:resource="http://linkbaton.com/get?item=0062515861&genre=book">
  </rdf:Description>

I hope the answer is something like "Working Group XYZ is working on this"


Eric

Eric Hellman
Openly Informatics, Inc.
http://www.openly.com/           21st Century Information Infrastructure
LinkBaton: Your Shortcuts to Information  http://linkbaton.com/

Received on Thursday, 20 January 2000 06:15:45 UTC