RE: New AFTF draft.

+1, but what the URI identifies is a resource, not a representation. It is 
possible to
simulate conneg even with multipart MIME by having multipart/alternative 
parts
of a multipart/related package:)

Cheers,

Christopher Ferris
Architect, Emerging e-business Industry Architecture
email: chrisfer@us.ibm.com
phone: +1 508 234 3624

"Henrik Frystyk Nielsen" <henrikn@microsoft.com> wrote on 09/11/2002 
11:20:05 AM:

> 
> I would be happy to use the term "representation" but I think it takes a
> bit more to explain than what Dave proposes.
> 
> The traditional Web model is that resolving a URI results in a
> representation of the resource identified by that URI. The "resolver"
> function is of course late bound and can depend on any number of things.
> A "resolution" may involve going to DNS, contacting an HTTP server, etc.
> but the only URI involved is that of the resource. The interesting thing
> is that there really is no fixed, or even named, concept of a "server". 
> 
> When resolution involves an HTTP server, an FTP server, or even a local
> file system, we seem to have no problem mapping this model. In the case
> of a local file system, the resource is the abstract concept of a named
> entity identified by the URI, the actual file is the representation
> resulting from the default resolution process.
> 
> The reason for picking the local file system example is that it is in
> fact very close to what we see in attachments, rather than being a file
> system, it is just some other container. However, applying the same Web
> model, one has a set of URIs identifying resources for which the actual
> bytes included as attachments constitute the representations of these
> resources.
> 
> That is, we never get in the situation where we have to discuss whether
> bags of bytes are resources or representations, they are always
> representations.
> 
> Henrik 
> 
> >I do see both sides to this, but I also think there are some 
> >subtleties (I 
> >must say, I still think the web architecture is broken in the area of 
> >representations.  As I've said before Web arch says:  "everything 
> >important is a resource identified by a URI, representations are 
> >important, representations are not in all cases resources, 
> >representations 
> >are not in all cases identified by and distinguished from other 
> >representations by distinct URIs."  QED.  Feels wrong.  I 
> >think we keep 
> >tripping over it, but I probably don't know what I'm talking about. 
> >Anyway, I'm not sure the answer on what to call the SOAP attachment is 
> >quite so simple thank you!