Re: Proposed issue: site metadata hook

And what, then, is the URI of the URI of the information about the 
resource?

(do we have MMGET to get metadata about that?)

Tim

PS: This is the problem with PROPFIND.

On Tuesday, Feb 11, 2003, at 03:29 US/Pacific, 
Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote:

>
> MGET solves this problem (and many others).
>
> A web site is just another resource. Let's agree that the
> <scheme>://<authority> portion of a URI denotes a web site
> (I don't think that will all that controversial).
>
> So <http://example.org> denotes a web site.
>
> And, 'MGET http://example.org' will return an RDF/XML instance 
> providing
> the description of that site.
>
> There is no need to require a metadata file with separate identity nor
> two calls to the server to get the required information (first a GET
> or HEAD to get the metadata file URI and then a GET to get the file).
>
> A single call of MGET does the job.
>
> And MGET also solves numerous other problems, such as those addressed
> by RDDL as well as general access to resource metadata via their URIs.
>
> And MGET allows all the confusion about XML Namespaces to simply
> be tossed aside, since MGET deals with full URIs and one can then
> inspect the knowledge defined about each individual term irregardless
> of whatever namespace was used as punctuation in some XML 
> serialization.
>
> A URI denotes a resource.
> Use GET to get a representation of the resource.
> Use MGET to get knowledge about the resource.
>
> Browsing the semantic web then is analogous to browsing the web,
> but using MGET rather than GET. Like two sides of the same coin,
> and HTTP is the coin.
>
> Simple.
>
> I'm working on having a demonstration of MGET and friends by the
> technical plenary...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Patrick
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ext Tim Berners-Lee [mailto:timbl@w3.org]
>> Sent: 10 February, 2003 18:02
>> To: www-tag@w3.org
>> Cc: tag@w3.org
>> Subject: Proposed issue: site metadata hook
>>
>>
>>
>> In the face-face meeting I took an action to write up a proposal for
>> the following potential issue:
>>
>>
>> Proposed Short name:  SiteMetadata-nn
>>
>> Title:   Web site metadata improving on robots.txt, w3c/p3p
>> and favicon
>> etc
>>
>> The architecture of the web is that the space of identifiers
>> on an http web site is owned by the owner of the domain name.
>> The owner, "publisher",  is free to allocate identifiers
>> and define how they are served.
>>
>> Any variation from this breaks the web.  The problem
>> is that there are some conventions for the identifies on websites,
>> that
>>
>>     /robots.txt  is a file controlling robot access
>>     /w3c/p3p is where you put a privacy policy
>>     /favico   is an icon representative of the web site
>>
>> and who knows what others.  There is of course no
>> list available of the assumptions different groups and manufacturers
>> have used.
>>
>> These break the rule.  If you put a file which happens to be
>> called robots.txt  but has something else in, then weird
>> things happen.
>> One might think that this is unlikely, now, but the situation could
>> get a lot worse.  It is disturbing that a
>> precedent has been set and the number of these may increase.
>>
>> There are other problems as well - as well sites are catalogued
>> by a number of different agents, there tend to be all kinds
>> or request for things like the above, while one would like to
>> be able to pick such things up as quickly as possible.
>>
>> If, when these features were designed, there had been a
>> general way of attaching metadata to a web site, it would
>> not have been necessary.
>>
>> The TAG should address this issue and find a solution,
>> or put in place steps for a solution to be found,
>> which allows the metadata about a site, including that for
>> later applications, to be found with the minimum overhead
>> and no use of reserved URIs within the server space.
>>
>> Example solution for feasability
>>
>> A new http tag such as "Metadata:" is introduced into HTTP
>> This takes one parameter, which is the URI of the
>> metadata document.  The header is supplied on response to
>> any GET or HEAD of the root document  ("/"). It may also
>> be supplied on a any other request, including error
>> requests.
>>
>> The Metadata document is conventionally written in RDF/XML.
>> It contains pointers to all kinds of standard and/or proprietary
>> metadata about the site, including for example
>>
>> - privacy policy
>> - robot control
>> - icon for representing the site
>> - site maps
>> - syndicates (RSS ) feeds
>> - IPR information
>> - site policy
>> - site owners
>>
>> The solution only needs to document the hook and the
>> vocabulary to point to metadata resources in current
>> use.  Vocabulary for new applications can be defined
>> by those applications.
>>
>> timbl
>>
>>

Received on Tuesday, 11 February 2003 08:14:23 UTC