What is the Web?
From: Lavoie,Brian (lavoie@oclc.org)
Date: Fri, Mar 05 1999
Message-ID: <72B89459DD2BD211B5CD0000F840094E10753B@oa3-server.dev.oclc.org>
From: "Lavoie,Brian" <lavoie@oclc.org>
To: "'www-wca@w3.org'" <www-wca@w3.org>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 11:16:27 -0500
Subject: What is the Web?
WCA members,
In working on the latest draft of the WCA terminology sheet, I noticed that
there is one glaring omission from the list: a definition of the Web.
Defining the Web is extremely important, because the Web definition has
implications for other terms that we use, and also for various
characterization metrics. For example, what is the approapriate definition
of the size of the Web? Number of HTTP servers? Number of Web sites?
Terabytes of information accessed by Web clients?
We need to know exactly what we're talking about when we refer to the Web:
what we are including, and equally important, what we are excluding.
The way I see it, there are two potential approaches to defining the Web:
The HTTP approach: the Web is the universe of information that can be
accessed via the HTTP protocol. This is a server-centric interpretation.
The HTML approach: the Web is the universe of information that can be
accessed via hyperlinks (defined by the HTML standard). This is a
client-centric interpretation.
Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. The HTTP approach I think
provides a clearer delineation of Web-accessible information, but clearly
excludes a lot of information that Web clients can access. The HTML approach
captures this additional information, but runs the risk of expanding the Web
to include virtually the entire Internet. Is there a middle ground?
I'd like to solicit as many opinions as possible on this issue before the
release of the next terminology draft.
Thanks,
Brian Lavoie
OCLC