Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data

Hi Dan,

On 7/22/07, Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> wrote:
> Mark Baker wrote:
> > IMO, those URIs identify different resources.  I say this because they
> > all return different representations when I dereference them.  If they
> > identified the same resource then their representations would be
> > identical (see Roy's definition of resource in his REST dissertation).
>
> I am suprised to hear you say that. The Web allows that you might
> receive different resource representations, or indeed nothing, on each
> dereference. For example - a weather site, or a fortunate cookie site.
> TimBL is not the weather, nor is he a fortune cookie, admittedly. But it
> doesn't follow from the fact that you've received different
> representations in different HTTP conversations, that those
> conversations were about distinct things.

That's an interesting choice of words, because I *fully* agree that
the representations returned from all four of those URIs are *about*
Tim, I just don't believe that makes them the same resource.

The difference is the same as that between the value of rdf:about in
an RDF/XML representation, and the URI which provided that
representation, e.g. (hypothetically)

GET http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tim_Berners-Lee HTTP/1.1

-->

Content-Type: application/rdf+xml
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i">
   ...
</rdf:Description>

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com

Received on Sunday, 22 July 2007 20:31:35 UTC