Re: Review of new HTTPbis text for 303 See Other

On Aug 5, 2009, at 7:37 PM, Ian Davis wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 4:30 PM, Pat Hayes<phayes@ihmc.us> wrote:
>> Hmm, but why would they not be able to use it? Seems to me that if  
>> we can
>> get our various storys straight, then this possibility is not only  
>> workable
>> but might be quite useful. Imagine there is some elaborate Web  
>> ontology
>> linked data service thing which uses 303 redirection on a whole  
>> range of
>> URIs it treats as denoting external entities, a thing along the  
>> lines of
>> DBpedia. But it also has a URI of its own, one that identifies it,  
>> and to
>> which it responds with a nicely designed, informative web page  
>> explaining
>> its history and how to use it and so forth. LIke DBpedia, in fact.  
>> Seems to
>> me that we should be able to say that this thing is a resource, and  
>> that it
>> can be described in just this way. Yes, it has a 200-codable  
>> representation
>> of itself, which it can deliver when you GET the appropriate URI,  
>> but it
>> also handles a large number of other URIs using 303 redirection,  
>> conformant
>> with http-range-14. One thing, one resource (or maybe one HTTP
>> endpoint/server), does all of this. Why not? It seems more natural  
>> to say
>> that about DBpedia than to have to say that DBpedia is not one  
>> thing but
>> thousands of different things, one for each URI it redirects.
>
> I don't think dbpedia is thousands of things. There is a website that
> answers requests for information about thousands of things.

Right, exactly my feeling also. There is one resource called DBpedia,  
with its URI http://wiki.dbpedia.org/
which identifies it.

>
> In fact, being pedantic I should ask you to properly define what you
> mean when you refer to dbpedia.

Whatever it is that the URI identifies. I might not know or care about  
its precise metaphysical status, but I know that there ought to be one  
of it.

Right now, it could be anything, in fact, because that URI redirects  
to http://wiki.dbpedia.org/About, thus neatly avoiding the http  
200/303 schizoid case outlined above. Maybe this should be the  
recommended practice, and this 200/303 splitting based on URIs should  
be avoided. So rather than having a 303 and a 200 to deliver, it  
always uses 303 but redirects to something else (in this case the .../ 
About) which has the 200 response attached. That also makes sense. I  
really have no axe to grind hard on this point, just wanting to get  
things clear.

Pat


> Do you mean the database of facts
> derived from wikipedia dumps, the project to create that database, the
> team that undertakes the project, the website that provides access to
> the database or possibly the domain name dbpedia.org?
>
> BTW http://dbpedia.org/resource/DBpedia appears to be a URI for the
> project and http://dbpedia.org/resource/DBpedia_Team seems to be a URI
> for the team.
>
> Ian
>

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Received on Thursday, 6 August 2009 14:48:48 UTC