Re: Why Hash?

> The URI-Reference approach (which I've adopted, after flirting with
> tag URIs) is to use URI-References as object identifiers, and URIs as
> knowledge-base identifiers.  Doing a GET on the URI contained in a
> URI-Reference gives you the owner's information about the thing
> denoted by the URI-Reference.  The acceptable content types in the GET
> will guide the server to providing the information in text/html,
> application/rdf+xml, or other formal or informal knowledge
> representation languages.  You may have many other sources of
> information, of course, and the owner may not provide any information,
> but you at least have one place to start.
> 
> A nearby approach, which I don't like, is to use URIs to denote
> everything.  With this plan, the owner has the same ability to publish
> easily-found information, but the whole system seems more confusing.
> Now we're back to wondering what exactly http://www.w3.org/ denotes.
> With the previous plan it's clear: it denote a collection of
> information (published by the W3C, probably about the W3C and other
> things).  If you use URIs for everything, you're essentially running a
> great risk of accidental identifier re-use.

I'm missing a huge slice of argument somewhere, it seems.  If we have no idea 
what exactly http://www.w3.org/spam denotes, then how do we have any idea what
http://www.w3.org/spam#eggs denotes?

And it sounds as if we might be back to the other thread, started by the 
rdf:about question: RDF cannot establish the canonical denotation of 
*anything*.  It can only express local agreements, which have to be processed 
carefully.

After all, do you think you know exactly what the strings "justice" or 
"programming language" denote?  Does this prevent you from using Engligh, 
which uses these strings as identifiers?


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +1 720 320 2046
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
4735 East Walnut St, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
XML strategy, XML tools (http://4Suite.org), knowledge management
Track chair, XML/Web Services One (San Jose, Boston): 
http://www.xmlconference.com/

Received on Sunday, 7 April 2002 14:10:30 UTC