RE: ISSUE-148: RDF Concepts - IRIs do *not* always denote the same resource

David,

On Saturday, December 14, 2013 4:12 AM, David Booth wrote:
> On 12/13/2013 07:30 PM, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> > To quote the paragraph that immediately precedes the offending bullet
> > point:
> >
> > [[
> > Guidelines for determining the referent
> > <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/#dfn-referent>of anIRI
> > <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/#dfn-iri>are provided in other
> > documents, like/Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One
> > <http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/>/[WEBARCH
> > <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/#bib-WEBARCH>] and/Cool URIs for
> > the Semantic Web <http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/>/[COOLURIS
> > <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/#bib-COOLURIS>]. A very brief,
> > informal and partial account follows:
> > ]]
> >
> > Where WEBARCH contains an entire section on URI collisions on the cost
> > thereof. And isn't the warning that what follows is a “very brief,
> > informal and partial account” enough?
> 
> I think that part above is an excellent addition, but no, I don't think
> it is enough.  In fact, even the way it is phrased above is somewhat
> subtly misleading, because it says "Guidelines for determining *the*
> referent" (my emphasis), thus wrongly implying that an IRI has only
> *one* referent.  I don't think that phrasing by itself is harmful
> enough to need changing.  But to later *explicitly* claim that "IRIs
> have global scope: Two different appearances of an IRI denote the
> same resource" seems too harmfully misleading to me.

What if we would spell out some consequences of IRIs that denote multiple things. Something like

  1.3 The Referent of an IRI

  [...]

  Guidelines for determining the referent of an IRI are provided in other
  documents, like Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One [WEBARCH]
  and Cool URIs for the Semantic Web [COOLURIS]. A very brief, informal and
  partial account follows:

  • IRIs have global scope by design. Thus, two different appearances
    of an IRI denote the same resource. Violations of this principle may
    lead to interoperability problems or inconsistencies when, e.g.,
    using data from multiple sources.

Would that address your concerns?


--
Markus Lanthaler
@markuslanthaler

Received on Saturday, 14 December 2013 12:05:07 UTC