Re: URIs for Concepts: Best Practices

Hi Al,

I like the approach that is outlined by the OASIS Published Subjects TC
[1]. Although this document is a draft and omits some pieces that I
would like to see, I feel that the general approach is a good one. To
summarise, an HTTP identifier, when used to identify a concept *should*
resolve to a human-readable resource that describes the concept. Despite
coming from the topic maps community, I feel that this approach is
applicable to the creation of any identifier scheme that uses HTTP for
namespacing.

The things that I would like to see the TC consider is recommendations
for either embedding, linking to (e.g. using RDDL) or providing as
parallel resource (via content negotiation), other machine-readable
descriptions of the concept and related resource - so an RDF resource
would be one example, the same information translated into XTM might be
another and so on.

It would be good to get the Published Subjects work kick started again
(the committee went quiet a long time ago) - perhaps we could work on
putting together a technical report to pass either to the OASIS TC or
just to publish as part of the SWAD work ?

Cheers,

Kal

[1]
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/3050/pubsubj-pt1-1.02-cs.pdf

On Mon, 2004-04-19 at 18:48, Miles, AJ (Alistair) wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I wanted to consult you all on this matter.  I have agreement from the EEA
> to publish the GEMET environmental thesaurus in the SKOS/RDF format.  The
> next step is to work out with them the URIs they wish to assign to their
> thesaurus and concepts.  I'm not sure what to recommend to them on this
> matter.  
> 
> I thought to use an http:// based URI base (e.g.
> http://www.eionet.eu.int/GEMET) and then add the id number of each concept
> (e.g. http://www.eionet.eu.int/GEMET#204).   
> 
> A first question is, is it OK to use http: URIs for concepts?  Sorry to drag
> this old chestnut up again, but I need some clear answer on best practices
> for this.  Are we not at all concerned that the same URI may identify both a
> thesaurus concept and a resolveable network resource (i.e. the file
> containing the RDF data)?
> 
> What do you think of info: based URIs for concepts?
> 
> Hope to hear from you on this,
> 
> Al.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
>  
> 
> ---
> Alistair Miles
> Research Associate
> CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
> Building R1 Room 1.60
> Fermi Avenue
> Chilton
> Didcot
> Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
> United Kingdom
> Email:        a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
> Tel: +44 (0)1235 445440
> 
-- 
Kal Ahmed <kal@techquila.com>
techquila

Received on Monday, 19 April 2004 14:30:18 UTC