Re: URIs for public data - was RE: URIs for Concept & ConceptScheme - best practice?

I agree that it is important to distinguish between resolvability of the identifier and the 'identification' function of it.  I have recently blogged about a similar topic (somewhat of a blog novice however) - see http://biodiv-dev.blogspot.com/ >
Kevin Richards

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<http://biodiv-dev.blogspot.com/%20<br>
----- Reply message -----
From: "Simon Cox" <simon.cox@jrc.ec.europa.eu>
Date: Sat, May 15, 2010 1:56 AM
Subject: URIs for public data - was RE: URIs for Concept & ConceptScheme - best practice?
To: "&apos;Rob Tice&apos;" <rob.tice@k-int.com>, "public-esw-thes@w3.org" <public-esw-thes@w3.org>

Rob -

I'm somewhat familar with the data.gov.uk policy in this area, in particular the plans from the UK Location Program (I've been providing feedback to the latter, on behalf of JRC who lead the INSPIRE initiative, and the OGC where I chair the 'Naming Authority').

As I understand it data.gov.uk is aware of the issue, and is planning to address the problem by using domains that represent concepts (schools, roads, etc) rather than the todays name for the govt. department that administers the resource (dcsf yesterday, education today).
This makes sense to me - the name has to be robust in the face of typical organizational instability.

But that's about the beginning of the URI: I'm focussing on the other end ;-)

Simon

--------------------------------------------------------
Simon Cox

European Commission, Joint Research Centre
Institute for Environment and Sustainability
Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, TP 262
Via E. Fermi, 2749, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy
Tel: +39 0332 78 3652
Fax: +39 0332 78 6325
mailto:simon.cox@jrc.ec.europa.eu
http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/simon-cox

SDI Unit: http://sdi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
IES Institute: http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
JRC: http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

--------------------------------------------------------



Any opinions expressed are personal unless otherwise indicated.



________________________________
From: Rob Tice [mailto:rob.tice@k-int.com]
Sent: Friday, 14 May 2010 15:44
To: 'Simon Cox'; public-esw-thes@w3.org
Subject: RE: URIs for Concept & ConceptScheme - best practice?

Simon

Anyone who is in the UK at the mo and is in the business of managing identifiers for resources within government departments might possibly be ruminating on why uri’s don’t actually always make good identifiers.

For info.

http://www.education.gov.uk

versus

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk


Proper separation between identification and resolution  anyone (Ducks behind the parapet :))


Cheers

Rob



From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Simon Cox
Sent: 14 May 2010 13:42
To: public-esw-thes@w3.org
Subject: URIs for Concept & ConceptScheme - best practice?

I'm thinking about identifier policies for ontologies and concept-schemes.

In work that I have done previously on identifier policies for Open Geospatial Consortium and for Commission for Geoscience Information we used the identifier scheme largely as a way to enforce certain governance arrangements for resource publication. The general principle is that a URI is composed of a number of fields. A new URI can only be minted if the values in all the fields are valid; the allowable value for each field must come from a specific register; and different parties are authorized to modify different registers. So we end up with a delegation system. This kind of scheme uses the URI structure for internal governance purposes, within the community.

But http URIs have a 'path-like' structure which can be interpreted as a tree. Read in this way, the URI scheme impies certain relationships between resources, in particular 'ownership' of children by their parents. Notwithstanding the REST principle that information is in the representation and not the identifier, Cool URIs can be interpreted by users, and typically support navigation through tweaking the URI (many refs).  This kind of scheme is aimed at external users.

Following this approach: is it smart to have the URI for a SKOS concept to be just an extension of the URI for the SKOS concept scheme?

e.g.
<http://resource.geosciml.org/concept/unit-rank/bed> skos:inScheme <http://resource.geosciml.org/concept/unit-rank>.

I'm assuming slash URIs, since I want the server to do most of the work, supporting content-negotiation, etc.
The advantage in this approach is that a casual user can navigate between parent and child by URI twiddling.
But possible gotchas are
(1) it assumes exactly one parent
   - it requires every concept to be in a scheme
   - it privileges one scheme above any others (though I think there is no limit on the number of inScheme properties a Concept can have?)
(2) there must be some others

I'd be interested in comments.


--------------------------------------------------------
Simon Cox

European Commission, Joint Research Centre
Institute for Environment and Sustainability
Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, TP 262
Via E. Fermi, 2749, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy
Tel: +39 0332 78 3652
Fax: +39 0332 78 6325
mailto:simon.cox@jrc.ec.europa.eu
http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/simon-cox

SDI Unit: http://sdi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
IES Institute: http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
JRC: http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

--------------------------------------------------------



Any opinions expressed are personal unless otherwise indicated.


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