Re: RULE vs MGET

Hi Patrick,

Patrick Stickler writes:
 > 
 > >>
 > >> (1) it violates the rights of web authorities to control their own URI
 > >> space
 > >
 > > I'm not sure what you mean here. AFAICS Web authorities are still free
 > > to do what they like with their web spaces. The agent won't get any
 > > guarantees that the RULE will work, just as it doesn't if the server
 > > chooses to implement MGET to mean e.g. 'multiple-get'.
 > 
 > It has to do with standards mandating what URIs web authorities
 > must use, not that every web authority that uses URIs matching the
 > pattern are using them to denote resource descriptions.
 > 
 > The RULE approach is like if the HTTP spec mandated that all resources
 > which resolve to HTML representations must be denoted by URIs ending
 > in '.html'.
 > 

Actually that's not a good analogy, since we're not suggesting that
*all* metadata to do with 'http://example.com/foo' must go in
http://example.com/foo.meta (or whatever). 

Just that if there exists a http://example.com/foo, *and* there exists
a http://example.com/foo.meta, the .meta URI should resolve to
metadata description of http://example.com/foo. A closer analogy would
be if the HTTP spec mandated that URIs ending in .html should resolve
to representations containing html.

I suppose in theory the webspace provider is still free to use
http://example.com/bah.meta to be something else entirely, since if
there doesn't exist a 'http://example.com/bah', then an agent won't
attempt to resolve 'http://example.com/bah.meta' anyway. (although
they may attempt to resolve http://example.com/bah.meta.meta ;-)


Actually, my only real concern with this MGET stuff is that if it does
become the standard way for an agent to retrieve descriptive metadata,
the likelyhood of me personally being able to participate in the
semantic web in the near future is vastly reduced. I just can't
imagine web hosting providers providing URIQA enabled servers cheaply
in the near future. The main benefit of the RULE approach for me is
that I can participate today with my existing web account. - I suspect
this also translates to a much faster uptake globally.

Thanks again,

Phil

Received on Wednesday, 10 March 2004 06:54:23 UTC