RE: What is at the end of the namespace?

On Fri, 16 Nov 2001 Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote:

>
> > The HTTP
> > specification
> > can only talk about those aspects of the protocol that are relevant to
> > HTTP.
>
> You've just summed up, IMO, the whole issue in a nutshell. The
> HTTP URI is relevant only to the semantics of the HTTP protocol.
> And the HTTP protocol is for *access* of concrete web resources.
> Thus HTTP URIs are only intended to be meaningful to processes
> based on the HTTP protocol, which expect to *return* something.
> Therefore HTTP URIs are not intended to denote abstract concepts.

SOAP Web Service endpoints can be named with http:* URIs, and communicated
with via XML representations shipped over HTTP. But you can't download the
service itself; that wouldn't make sense. When you think of HTTP as a way
of talking to some (possibly authoritative) service about URI-named
resources, this whole URI thing makes a bit more sense. If you think of it
as a glorified form of file-sharing (like NFS, Samba etc) URIs for
abstractions seem odd.

Dan