XRI 2.0 Review by the W3C TAG

Summary: The TAG has reviewed the XRI 2.0 documents and requirements
surrounding the use of XRI.  At this time, it is the opinion of the
TAG that the case has not been made for a new URI scheme, rather that
the requirements can be addressed very well using the http URI scheme
and existing implementations of HTTP and DNS.

OASIS Team,

The TAG has reviewed the XRI 2.0 documents [1] and while we do
understand the case for an abstraction layer, we also believe that
this can be provided with the http scheme and existing HTTP and DNS
protocols.

The recommendations that we have documented in Architecture of the World
Wide Web, Volume One state that "A specification SHOULD reuse an
existing URI scheme (rather than create a new one) when it provides
the desired properties of identifiers and their relation to
resources." [2] In this case, a properly managed and supported use of
the existing http scheme, based on the excellent analysis in your
documents, does have the desired properties and can provide the same
functionality without the loss of interoperability which would
accompany a new scheme.

An abstraction layer which uses current technologies could be deployed
much more quickly, as creating a new URI scheme would require the
whole web to implement these technologies before they would achieve
widespread adoption.

Some background to the above response, as well as an indication of
what would be involved in taking most of the work done on XRIs forward
without a new URI scheme, can be found in several recent messages to
the www-tag mailing list [3] [4].

Respectfully,
W3C TAG

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=xri
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/#URI-scheme
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Apr/0076.html
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Apr/0088.html

--------------------------------------
Vincent Quint                       INRIA Rhône-Alpes
INRIA                               ZIRST
e-mail: Vincent.Quint@inria.fr      655 avenue de l'Europe
Tel.: +33 4 76 61 53 62             Montbonnot
Fax:  +33 4 76 61 52 07             38334 Saint Ismier Cedex
                                    France

Received on Friday, 29 April 2005 08:52:50 UTC