Is a graph an information resource?

Chimezie, all,

I'm trying to understand the implications of the following sentence in the 
current HTTP Protocol WD: 

"In this way, an HTTP request can route operations towards a named graph in 
an RDF dataset via its URI. However, in using URIs in this way, we are not 
directly identifying the RDF graphs but rather the networked RDF knowledge 
they represent."

So, the way I interpret this is that what you call "networked RDF 
knowledge" is an information resource, whereas the graph itself is not. Is 
this a correct interpretation?

I can see arguments for making this distinction, but I'm not sure it is 
useful. In light of httpRange-14, such an interpretation would seem to 
dictate that when dereferencing a named graph via its URI, a 303 would need 
to be returned to redirect the client to an information resource with the 
data itself. 

Actually, I've always looked upon an RDF graph as an information resource. 
One may not bother to make it dereferencable, but that doesn't disqualify 
it from being an information resource, since a 4xx return code just leaves 
it undefined what it is. To me, an RDF graph is just a bunch of triples, 
i.e. information. What would be the shortcomings of such a naive view?

Cheers,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
kjetil@kjernsmo.net
http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/

Received on Saturday, 10 October 2009 20:31:51 UTC