- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:22:03 -0500
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>, Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>, "public-awwsw@w3.org" <public-awwsw@w3.org>
Pat Hayes writes: > I think what Harry should have said is that they are too > ephemeral for someone to want to give them an enduring name or > identifier. But there are other ways to refer to things than > baptizing them with a URI for all time. On this I don't think I agree. We're talking about the Web here, and what's more, I think a representation is an information resource. I mean, not only can the thing be represented as a computer message, the whole point of it is to be sent in a computer message! The key architectural imperative for the Web is "Identify with URIs." I see no reason why, in cases where you do want some means of identifying a particular representation, a URI wouldn't be the way to do it. When I make that choice, I get a variety of advantages: I can make Semantic Web statements about the representation (it was buggy, it took a long time to arrive, it was cached at proxy p1, etc.) in the natural way without resorting to indirection; I think I could even choose to run a server that would respond to GETs with representations of, well, the representation. I think the usual rules of the Web apply well here: when you need to identify something, do it with URIs. Noah [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#pr-use-uris -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 --------------------------------------
Received on Friday, 21 November 2008 23:22:49 UTC