Bookmarkable queries

I think requirement 3.8 brings up major questions about just what we
consider a "query". Does a "query" include a selection of the RDF
source, or can the same query be executed against different sources?
(The latter seems much more sensible to me...)

It makes a lot of sense to make clear that a query should be encodable
as text, and that requirement implicitly means that a query can be
encoded *within* a URI, but that's a long way from saying that a query
*is* a URI. The requirement as written conjures notions of new schemes
and URLs and protocol dependence and all the rest.

At the very very least, I'd suggest changing "...a query as a URI." to
"...a query within a URI."

I'm still not very happy with this requirement, because the whole URI
issue just seems a side point. I don't think we need to standardize the
format for a query URI in order to declare victory, and if we don't do
that then I'm not sure we'll have grounds for deciding whether we've met
the requirement.

I'd go back to the very simple "It must be possible to express a query
as unicode text." (Better ideas than 'unicode'?) This actually subsumes
the requirement that queries be able to be embedded in URIs, and yet I
think we've already agreed on it, so it seems like a no-brainer.

Received on Tuesday, 11 May 2004 14:13:56 UTC