Re: Web architecture and metadata

Simon,

Nice insight!

In posting the links, I hadn't really considered how they apply to the 
mutability debate.  Jonathan Rees' note [1] in particular (which should be noted 
has a status somewhere between individual contribution and working draft) 
provides language and concepts for dealing with degrees of mutability in a 
somewhat principled fashion.

#g
--

Simon Miles wrote:
> Graham, all,
> 
> I realise that there have been many posts since the one I'm replying
> to, but the articles you suggested (esp. [1], [2]) seems directly
> related to, and agreeing with, what Jim and others have been saying,
> and I haven't seen anyone related their arguments to our discussion.
> 
> In brief, I think that their arguments would support proposals for us to:
>  - talk only about resources (not states, representations etc.) for
> anything of which we could find the provenance, and
>  - first define what the provenance of a resource is with regards to
> just those aspects for which it is considered immutable, before
> loosening this assumption for user convenience
> 
> In less brief:
> An implication of their arguments are that distinctions between web
> "resource", "state" and "representation" are not precisely defined and
> anyway merely examples of a wider range of
> generalisation/specialisation relationships. This seems to support the
> suggestions (from Graham and Martin?) that we do not distinguish
> resource and resource state: everything's a resource.
> 
> I would express the main argument of the articles in my own terms as:
> we can talk about the metadata of any resource *in those aspects for
> which it is immutable* (or, in their terms, where it is true for every
> specialisation of the resource). So the Royal Society, while
> definitely a mutable resource, will always have been founded in 1660
> [3]. A statement of its membership however, would have to apply to the
> Society as it is on a particular date, a specialisation of the first
> resource.
> 
> [1] additionally comments on mapping this abstract idea to practice on
> the web. Specifically, a general resource may be referred to when you
> are actually making a statement about one specialisation of that
> resource if it is clear from context which specialisation you mean,
> e.g. your statement uses the URI of a webpage but actually refers to
> the serialisation of that webpage in your browser.
> 
> thanks,
> Simon
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/awwsw/ir/20110517/
> [2] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Generic.html
> [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society
> 
> On 31 May 2011 15:20, Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org> wrote:
>> I just spotted this work-in-progress of the W3C TAG, which might have some
>> bearing on our approach to provenance...
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/awwsw/ir/20110517/
>>
>> This in turn leads (directly and/or indirectly) to:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/issues/57
>> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/issues/62
>> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/issues/63
>> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2009/02/metadata-survey.html
>> http://odontomachus.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/the-place-of-metadata/
>> http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Generic.html
>>
>> It appears this is a live issue for the TAG:
>>
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2011May/0086.html
>>
>> #g
>> --
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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> 
> 
> 

Received on Thursday, 2 June 2011 21:16:00 UTC