Re: Is 303 really necessary?

On Thu, 2010-11-04 at 18:27 -0400, mike amundsen wrote:
> <snip>
> Also please note that if you mint your URIs using a 303-redirect service
> such as http://thing-described-by.org/ then the extra network hop from
> the 303 redirect could be optimized away by parsing the URI, as
> described here:
> http://thing-described-by.org/#optimizing
> For example, you would have the relationship:
> 
>  <http://t-d-b.org/?http://example/toucan-page>
>      :isDescribedBy
>           <http://example/toucan-page> .
> </snip>
> So the solution is to introduce a URI convention (assigning meaning to
> the convention) and use a central service to implement this feature.

It is *a* solution -- not necessarily *the* solution.  And if you don't
want it centralized, there are ways to get around that also, which I
discussed in 2005:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swbp-wg/2005Aug/0057.html 

> 
> <snip>
> so if the toucan were denoted by the URI
> http://t-d-b.org/?http://example/toucan-page
> the you know that its description is located at
> http://example/toucan-page
> and there is no need to actually dereference the other URI.
> </snip>
> And to expect consumers of the URI to also understand and honor that
> convention.
> 
> That sure looks|sounds to me like a new URI scheme.

It is not a URI scheme as defined in RFC 3986:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
It is conceptually similar in that it can define its own conventions and
semantics.  However, the key point is that it is *layered* on the good
old http scheme.  Thus, if you click on this URI:

  http://t-d-b.org/?http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/ 

it works, with no changes needed to your browser.  In contrast, if you
click on this URI:

  tdb:http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/

You get an error.



-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
Cleveland Clinic (contractor)
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of Cleveland Clinic.

Received on Friday, 5 November 2010 00:42:43 UTC