Re: Roy's definition of a REST resource as a "Curried" form of ftrr:IR

On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 13:40 -0500, Jonathan Rees wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 1:18 PM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
> > Nathan,
> >
> > Have you looked at the definition of IR that I proposed a while back?
> > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-awwsw/2008Apr/0046.html
> > It is logically equivalent to Roy's definition of a REST resource, ...
> 
> I would not call either of these definitions. They are models, or
> theories, or formalisms - they predict certain properties of IRs. But
> they are not a good match to any plausible ontology of IRs since they
> entail ridiculous conclusions such as "Moby Dick is a function" and
> "the domain of the Declaration of Independence is time".

I do not consider those to be ridiculous entailments at all.  Those
entailments may be perfectly fine in an application that has no need to
distinguish between Moby Dick and a function.

> 
> I'm not saying it's a useless idea, or not predictive, or that we
> shouldn't talk about it. I'm just asking everyone to stop calling
> these things definitions and start calling them what they are. As
> Nathan has pointed out, Roy's paper has three mutually inconsistent
> "definitions" of "resource". The paper makes much more sense if you
> just treat the function "definition" as a mistake: He should have said
> something like "We can model resources as functions ..." and you
> (David) should do something similar.

It sounds like you're using the word "definition" in a highly
specialized way.  I was using it in the generic English sense.  I think
you may need to cut me (and others) some slack here if we're not using
the term in the specialized sense that you want.  Or at least tell us
exactly how you want the term used.


-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Friday, 4 March 2011 21:10:04 UTC