Re: A parable about RFC 3986.

Jonathan A Rees writes:

>   - Fielding's REST resources come in two flavors, formal and
>     informal.  His formal definition (mapping from time to sets of
>     representations) is only the fiat aspect of the resource, not other
>     aspects of the resource.  Those other aspects are captured in the
>     informal discussion.  So a fiat resource could be considered to be
>     a pair of a Fielding-formal-REST-resource and a
>     Fielding-informal-REST-resource.

Where did 'aspects' come from?  What does it mean for its
representations to be constitutive of a fiat resource, but for it to
have 'other aspects'?

> This suggests a position intermediate between a free-for-all where a
> retrieval-enabled hashless HTTP URI (REHHU) can refer to anything at
> all, and where it has to refer to an information resource: say that
> a REHHU has to refer to a fiat resource. We have proven the latter,
> while the more restrictive (and useful) information resource rule is
> wishful thinking.

Consider some commonly-cited examples of information resources, _Moby
Dick_ and Beethoven's 9th Symphony.  The representations retrievable
from the various candidate URIs for these resources don't quite seem
_constitutive_ of those 'works' (in the FRBR sense), in the same way
that a collection of 'manifestations' (in the FRBR sense) of those
works don't determine what the work is. . .  This would seem to say
that _Moby Dick_ isn't a fiat resource, which is . . . disappointing.
What am I missing?

ht
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       Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
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Received on Thursday, 26 January 2012 09:53:41 UTC