RE: web proper names redux

Hi Tom:

Yes, I may have shot the original mail off too quickly as I see Patrick's
MT qualifier now. However, I am still at a loss to know as to where in MT
there is any mention of URI opacity (or not) - I just checked. (BTW, why are
we talking about MT? Surely this doc has been superseded by the new crop of
recs earlier this year?)

My point anyway is not that a generic RDF processor should be able to
interpret URI structure (apart from validating that it is a URI, of course)
but rather to say that certain URIs besides exposing the generic URI syntax
can also expose public data if there is a standard public specification for
the URI syntax. Applications - RDF or otherwise - are free to interpret this
data as they so choose.

I still don't buy the notion that URI's are fully opaque wrt their
structure. (They are of course opaque wrt network endpoints.)

Cheers,

Tony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Thomas B. Passin
> Sent: 28 September 2004 01:19
> To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> Cc: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: web proper names redux
> 
> 
> 
> Hammond, Tony wrote:
> >>This isn't really a "solution" at the RDF level, since URIs
> >>are fully opaque, and thus, one is not licensed to examine 
> >>the URI scheme to make decisions regarding the meaning of a 
> >>given URI, insofar as the RDF MT is concerned. True, some 
> >>people do that, but that is non-conformant and potentially 
> >>dangerous behavior for a SW client.
> > 
> > 
> > This actually should not go unchallenged - it is simply incorrect - 
> > see
> > 
> > 	http://w3.org/TR/webarch/#uri-opacity
> 
> Patrick specifically qualified the remark you quoted above by 
> restricting it to the RDF Recs.  Any parsing of URLs is above 
> and beyond 
> what a conformant RDF processor is required to do.  There is 
> nothing to 
> prevent you from parsing out a uri and using the results to 
> add triples, 
> and it might even be very useful sometimes, but it's not 
> provided for by 
> RDF.  And why should it be?  At present, RDF has no mechanism to 
> incorporate any specific uri into itself, no matter how 
> useful it might 
> be.  I don't see a good reason to integrate in a specific uri scheme 
> that can be parsed, when we can't integrate any uris, period.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Tom P
> 
> -- 
> Thomas B. Passin
> Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web (Manning Books) 
> http://www.manning.com/catalog/view.php?book=passin
> 



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Received on Tuesday, 28 September 2004 10:12:19 UTC