Re: Is a namesapce a resource? - was: duck

 
> From: Tim Berners-Lee (timbl@w3.org)

> Maybe it is that he concpet of self-describing documents just does not
> exist for many people.  While I can understand that not everyone would
> put there energy I had not anticipated that there would be an actual
> resistance to identifying namespaces as resources.
 
But isn't the reason people don't want to think of a namespace as a
resource because people they see it as a slippery slope to
proprietorizing XML: when Microsoft said that BizTalk namespace URIs
locate a schema in a particular format, that means that in order to use
a Biztalk document one has to buy into the schema language (i.e., the
products) that it requires. 

About a year ago, I wrote an posting to XML-DEV that "Namespaces is
dead" trying to alert people to the problem of equating namespace with
schema 1:1. As long as W3C prevaricates with variations on "the
namespace URI should/can locate something which can/should
define/describe the language", the chances of getting a workable, open
system decreases. 

We need definite ways to discover and retrieve multiple resources keyed
from a namepace URI: we need to be able to find if particular resources
relevant to that namespace in some domain are there or not there. Having
a simple relationship between namespace URI and some rendition of some
definitional entity at the other end is little use: the current
lucky-dip system where you just don't know what kind of thing may or may
not be at the other end is no basis for a workable system.

The constituency who is opposed to a simple retrieval from a namespace
URI not only include those who don't feel keen on self-describing
documents, but more importantly (and, I think, more numerously) includes
those whose requirements for "self-description" are not satisfied by the
current vague hand-waving.  

This is a point that has been made many times (e.g. by Tim Bray) on this
list so far: so I hope when Tim BL is talking about people for whom "the
concept of self-describing documents just do not exist" he does not
blanket everyone who is against the simplistic method he has been
putting forward.

To the contrary, I would say that the biggest thing holding back the
development of a "semantic web" at the moment is the failure of
architecture at the W3C: that failure being that people need conventions
to allow multiple resources in different domains to be retrieved, keyed
by the namespace.  


Rick Jelliffe

Received on Wednesday, 7 June 2000 14:24:57 UTC