Sameness of referents of IR URIs

Just to add to our use-case list perhaps...

We (AWWSW) should have a story about the following... there is some  
kind of underspecification of IR identity that Ray is picking up on,  
and whether he's right or not, our work product ought to recommend a  
way to think about this issue that dispels confusion.  I think I know  
what I'd say to him, but it would be nice to have consensus.

Jonathan

Begin forwarded message:

> Resent-From: www-tag@w3.org
> From: "Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress" <rden@loc.gov>
> Date: July 25, 2008 2:25:14 PM EDT
> To: <www-tag@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: Private naming conventions and hypermedia (was Re:  
> Draft minutes from TAG telcon of 2008-07-24
> Archived-At: <http://www.w3.org/mid/1a5101c8ee83$e2c559d0$2caf938c@lib.loc.gov 
> >
>
> I don't believe that:
>
> (1)   http://loc.gov/ark:/12025/654xz321
> (2)  http://rutgers.edu/ark:/12025/654xz321
> (3)  ark:/12025/654xz321
>
> Identify the same resource.
>
> (1) and (2) are replications of the resource identified by the  
> abstract
> identifier (3).   They may be identical (and then again they may  
> not), but
> by what definition of "resource" are they the same resource?
>
> As I see it, if you (hypothetically) were to resolve  ark:/ 
> 12025/654xz321
> then you are happy to get any replication.
>
> But http://loc.gov/ark:/12025/654xz321  resolves to the replication  
> (of the
> abstract resource identified by ark:/12025/654xz321) that resides at
> loc.gov.   (Please see "aside" below.)
>
> And http://rutgers.edu/ark:/12025/654xz321  resolves to the  
> replication (of
> the abstract resource identified by ark:/12025/654xz321) that  
> resides at
> rutgers.edu.
>
> (Aside: loc does not participate in ARK, the ARK specification  
> mistakenly
> lists loc. But for discussion sake consider this a valid example.)
>
> So as I see it, (1) and (2) are different resources.  And (3) is a  
> third
> distinct resource.
>
> --Ray
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Baker" <distobj@acm.org>
> To: "Henry S. Thompson" <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>
> Cc: <www-tag@w3.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 12:41 PM
> Subject: Private naming conventions and hypermedia (was Re: Draft  
> minutes
> from TAG telcon of 2008-07-24
>
>
>>
>>> HST [...] I think there's a fundamental issue we need to be clear  
>>> on: is
> it OK for a group of domain name owners to agree a naming convention  
> amongst
> themselves? In the ARK case, this trespasses on the WebArch advice wrt
> aliasing, and in general might also seem to fall foul of the whole  
> business
> of URI opacity (that was Mark Baker's particular concern).
>>
>> "URI Opacity" is a term that I've found means different things to
>> different folks, so I try to avoid it now.  But I do believe that
>> private naming conventions do cause harm to the Web because they are
>> essentially a proprietary form of link and link metadata.  If two  
>> URIs
>> at different domains identify the same resource, dereferencing one of
>> them should provide a declaration (Link header, RDFa, whatever) that
>> the resource is the same (owl:sameAs or equivalent) as the other.
>>
>>> From a REST perspective, the architectural constraint that's being
>> disregarded by this practice is "hypermedia as the engine of
>> application state", and IMO, it's the constraint most responsible for
>> imparting Web-nature.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Mark.
>>
>
>

Received on Friday, 25 July 2008 19:15:29 UTC