- From: Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>
- Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:21:28 -0400
- To: Michael Hausenblas <michael.hausenblas@deri.org>
- Cc: AWWSW TF <public-awwsw@w3.org>
A positive message on the www-tag list would say I'm not alone in saying these nutty things... that might be helpful Thanks Jonathan On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Michael Hausenblas <michael.hausenblas@deri.org> wrote: > > Perfectly fine with me - thanks a lot for the brilliant summary. Shall I > reply on TAG list or is sufficient, here that I agree with it? > > Cheers, > Michael > > -- > Dr. Michael Hausenblas > LiDRC - Linked Data Research Centre > DERI - Digital Enterprise Research Institute > NUIG - National University of Ireland, Galway > Ireland, Europe > Tel. +353 91 495730 > http://linkeddata.deri.ie/ > http://sw-app.org/about.html > > > >> From: Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org> >> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:35:05 -0400 >> To: AWWSW TF <public-awwsw@w3.org> >> Subject: Fwd: AWWSW status (F2F prep) >> Resent-From: AWWSW TF <public-awwsw@w3.org> >> Resent-Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:35:41 +0000 >> >> sorry, i had to send this off without your review, as i was already 4 >> days late on my tag f2f prep. hope it's ok. >> >> -Jonathan >> >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> From: Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org> >> Date: Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:15 PM >> Subject: AWWSW status (F2F prep) >> To: www-tag@w3.org >> >> AWWSW status (F2F prep) >> >> The AWWSW group was started because Alan Ruttenberg and I were doing >> quite a bit of ontology design and ontology advising and didn't >> understand the resource/representation relationship (and the >> "information resource" idea, which is intimately bound up with it) >> well enough to do our work or guide others. The question comes up >> when you have things that you want to give a URI to, and you want to >> use 200 responses (non-# non-303 URI), but want to be protected >> against someone coming along later and saying "hey, that's not an >> information resource," or "but you said it's an IR, and that implies >> xxx" where you don't mean to say xxx, or "that's an IR, but not the one >> you want it to be". >> >> This is dual (equivalent) to the question: Suppose you get 200 >> responses, is it OK to then decide that the named resource >> is some particular thing or has certain properties? E.g., if I am >> the owner of dx.doi.org, can I say that the URI >> http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbn051 names the journal article >> that's indicated in the representation (so that I can license others to use >> the URI when recording metadata)? (Note that this is a subtle >> example. The httpRange-14 rule by itself is not adequate to rule this in or >> out. In particular the representation might fail to be "of" the >> journal article even if we decide the journal article is an IR. Also >> there is redirection involved, which complicates things further.) >> >> Alan and I approached the TAG, which said essentially "you figure it out." >> (Shortly thereafter I discovered that I was on the TAG.) >> >> Some ontologies where this is an issue include FRBR, Dublin Core, >> Bibo, SWAN, CiTO, IAO, and IRW, but as the practice of metadata >> deployment, document and media annotation, etc. increases >> (perhaps with the help of the Link: header?), I expect there to be >> many more. >> >> A broader motivation, which I share with TimBL, is that if we had a >> logical framework (perhaps expressible in RDF or OWL), we'd have a >> tool that we could use to help clear up a number of number of web >> architecture muddles. httpRange-14 is just an example; another >> recent one on www-tag was "are HTML elements information >> resources?" >> >> A third motivation is that an RDF vocabulary for webarch could be >> useful in a number of application domains, e.g. testing and >> validation, or recording change logs (e.g. Memento), or "HTTP over >> SPARQL", or further developing Tim's generic resources ontology >> (genont). >> >> Additional concerns have been raised in the group about how >> URIs might become bound to things, but I have not pursued >> this (yet). My current theory is that URI binding is a personal matter >> subject to your belief set, and how you come to that is your >> own business. You may choose to let what happens on the >> Web influence your beliefs, and there may be a recommended >> elective way to allow this to happen, and >> perhaps an outcome of this project, in the future, might be >> such a way. >> >> I can't say we've made a lot of visible progress, but I think I do >> understand the problem better now that I did before. >> >> First, Roy Fielding is right: We're not just talking about HTTP >> semantics, but rather the semantics of that part of web architecture >> that is expressible in HTTP. This includes the >> resource/representation relationship, the various redirects (including >> 303), and possibly existence (creation and deletion). I think webarch >> as deployed might include REST as a subset, but certainly there are >> resources deployed using GET+200 that do not obey REST discipline, and >> we need to account for these somehow. >> >> Second, TimBL has provided more information about his view of what is >> and isn't an information resource, and he thinks they're like. I have >> been unable so far (my >> inadequacy) to combine these use cases with other constraints (such as >> grandfathering all possible web pages) into an actionable definition >> that makes sense to me, but I continue to work at it. >> >> Third, "authoritative" per the updated http: URI scheme in HTTPbis is, >> I think, orthogonal to the R/R problem. The "authoritative" responses >> do not determine the resource uniquely, they only say that it belongs >> to a class of resources that participate in the R/R relationships >> communicated by the responses. A contradiction between an >> "authoritative" response and other information believed about the >> resource might lead you to discount the "authoritative" response (as >> recommended by the GBIF persistent identifiers report) or to >> stop using that URI to name the resource, just as easily as it might >> lead you to doubt what you thought you knew about the resource. >> >> Of course, the ability of an agent to speak HTTP-authoritatively about >> a resource may be due to the agent's ability to control the resource >> and therefore its "representations". For these particular resources, >> the R/R relationship holds because the agent says so. For others >> (such as Moby Dick) it might hold in spite of what the agent says. >> >> I am concentrating on the resource/representation relationship. My >> ambition is that if we have a story about when this holds and doesn't >> hold - in particular how to falsify it - then answering the >> question "what is an information resource" will fall out as a side >> effect: an IR is simply something which happens to be able to >> participate in this relationship. >> >> So far the best lead I've encountered so far in understanding the >> relationship is ABLP logic, as is being pursued by Dan Connolly. It >> may be that ABLP can't be used directly, as convincing someone that a >> web page is a principal, or that "principal" has any ontological >> consequence, might be a tough sell. Or it may be that this, too, is >> an ontological wild goose chase, or that ABLP is about >> the URI/resource relationship instead of the resource/representation >> relationship. But it's worth pursuing. >> >> Open issues on which these considerations impinge: >> ISSUE-50 URNs and registries - persistence vs. trust in "authority" >> ISSUE-57 HTTP redirections - consequences of 30x >> ISSUE-63 metadata architecture - metadata for http:-named resources >> ISSUE-53 generic resources (appears to be closeable) >> >> Next step (for me): Look in more detail at the kinds of metadata, >> including class memberships, one might want to write using the >> abovementioned ontologies for some sample resources, >> and attempt to generalize from there. >> >> I'll try to have slideware ready in time for the F2F. >> >> Thanks to Michael Hausenblas and David Booth for their help. >> This email is in the first person because they haven't >> seen it to agree with it or not, but I am happy to expand >> "I" to "we" for anything they want to take credit for above. >> Thanks also to many others including Alan, Tim, Harry Halpin, >> Stuart Williams, and Noah for their contributions. >> >> Jonathan >> >> too pressed for time to look up URIs for all the things cited. here >> are the obscurest ones: >> memento: >> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/memento_protocol-based_time_travel_for_th >> e_web.php >> gbif: http://www2.gbif.org/Persistent-Identifiers.pdf >> iao: http://code.google.com/p/information-artifact-ontology/ >> genont: www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Generic.html >> the others you should be able to get from google or tracker. >> > >
Received on Wednesday, 17 March 2010 19:22:04 UTC