- From: Markus Lanthaler <markus.lanthaler@gmx.net>
- Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 16:13:03 +0100
- To: "'public-lod Data'" <public-lod@w3.org>
Hi Martynas, On Friday, November 22, 2013 3:12 PM, Martynas Jusevičius wrote: > Markus, > > in the Linked Data context, what is the difference between > "identifier" and "hyperlink"? Last time I checked, URIs were opaque > and there was no such distinction. These things quickly turn into philosophical discussions but simply speaking the difference lies in the expectations of a client. In XML for example, namespaces are just identifiers. There's no expectation that you can go and dereference that namespace identifier (even though in most cases they use HTTP URIs). The same is true about RDF. All URIs are just identifiers. From an RDF point of view, there's no difference between isbn:343-224122 and http://example.com/343-224122. As you say, they are opaque. But if you build applications, it is important to distinguish between identifiers and hyperlinks. A browser for example doesn't render the string http://example.com/343-224122 as a clickable link unless you mark it up as one using the <a> tag. Linked Data advocates that all URIs are dereferenceable. But that's communicated out of band. Apart from JSON-LD, which states that URIs SHOULD be dereferenceable, no other RDF media type makes such a statement. Thus you need to use constructs such as hydra:Link and hydra:Resource to make the distinction explicit. Hope this helps. If not, let me know. -- Markus Lanthaler @markuslanthaler
Received on Friday, 22 November 2013 15:13:41 UTC