Re: My action item on Moby Dec, issue 14, etc

On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 03:35:49PM +0100, Bill de hÓra wrote:
> > Jonathan Borden
> > This _entire_ controversy exists simply because the meaning 
> > of the term
> > "resource" is hopelessly overloaded, perhaps "URI" is as well.
> 
> No. A while back a few people on this list asserted that mappings from
> URIs to resources are unambiguous. Indeed, this unambiguous mapping is
> an axiom of the Web. Tim Bray says different and is prepared to take a
> hard line on the matter. The RDF Model Theory says different too, see
> below.

Hmm... I don't see a difference between these two viewpoints. The system
is only made up of two things: a URI and a Resource. A URI can't exist
without a Resource and a Resource can't exist without a URI, and the
mapping is 1:1 exclusive. Within that system it seems pretty unambiguos.

> I don't see the disagreement having anything whatsoever to do with
> definitions of resource and URIref, but having everything to do with how
> these sets are related. You indicate as much: "Each URIref uniquely and
> unambiguously labels the node.". That is where the disagreement lies.

But it all comes back to the fact that some prefer to use the 
term 'resource' to mean a 'a bag of bits' instead of 'the thing
that exists when a URI is created'. The first definition of 'resource'
exists without any context involving URIs so there is no defined mapping
between a URI and that definition, hence it is very ambiguous. 
I think what Tim Bray is saying is that attempting to use definitions for 
'resource' other than 'the thing that is created with a URI is created'
is dangerous and not within the realm of provability or usefullness
at the architecture level.

> > A URIref is a _label_ for a _node_. Each URIref uniquely and 
> > unambiguously
> > labels the node. Not all nodes are required to have labels. 
> > Nodes may have
> > properties and these properties may relate one node to another.
> 
> You could call that model a "Node Description Framework" or NDF for
> short. 
> 
> As it happens, we have another model called the "Resource Description
> Framework" or RDF for short. I know more about the RDF model than the
> NDF one, but at first glance it seems there is at least one difference
> between the two. In the RDF model, each URIref must be disambiguated.
> Thus it is not an axiom of the RDF model that each URIref uniquely and
> unambiguously labels a resource, we expect a process to do that work for
> us. 

And, depending on what RDF expects the definition of 'resource' to be,
using another process to do that work may have been a mistake...

What is RDFs definition of a 'resource'?

-MM

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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | urn:pin:1
michael@neonym.net      |                              | http://www.neonym.net
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Received on Friday, 20 September 2002 10:55:19 UTC