- From: Steve Harris <steve.harris@garlik.com>
- Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2011 01:34:50 +0100
- To: nathan@webr3.org
- Cc: Eric Prud'hommeaux <eric@w3.org>, Alex Hall <alexhall@revelytix.com>, Andy Seaborne <andy.seaborne@epimorphics.com>, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>, RDF-WG <public-rdf-wg@w3.org>
On 2011-04-01, at 21:39, Nathan wrote: > Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote: >> * Alex Hall <alexhall@revelytix.com> [2011-04-01 15:29-0400] >>> On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Nathan <nathan@webr3.org> wrote: >>> >>>> Andy Seaborne wrote: >>>> >>>>> On 01/04/11 20:06, Nathan wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Andy Seaborne wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> Are there examples of real worlds data that uses relative IRIs in >>>>>>> N-triples? If not, we could decide that theer is no base processing in >>>>>>> RDF-triples, absolute IRIs only. >>>>>>> >>>>>> How can we have @base processing if there are no directives or @base >>>>>> definitions? I'd strongly suggest we keep this to *IRI*s only. >>>>>> >>>>> The base is also set by where the file is read from. >>>>> >>>> Indeed, reliably though? for instance taking in to account the file being >>>> sent by email, being part of a zip archive, being in the message body of a >>>> PUT HTTP request, being in the body of a GET HTTP response with a >>>> Content-Location which differs from the effective request URI? >>>> >>>> Personally, I'd quite like that can of worms left closed for RDF-Triples :) >>>> >>> +1, but that reflects my bias as a developer, where often times all I'm >>> handed is an input stream with no information about where the content came >>> from. It's nice to be able to use that information when it's available, but >>> I think it's extra complexity that's best left out of a simple format like >>> N-Triples. >> I'm a big fan of relocatable data and often take advantage of the >> ability to have a set of interrelated resources which can be moved >> from one location to another, or accessed both via e.g. http: and >> file: protocols. As an example, the SPARQL test suite manifests have >> relative references to the data, queries and expected results. This >> allows me to run the tests off the web or to download a tarball to an >> arbitrary location and run the tests. Relative references are a very >> handy element of web architecture. >> I expect that, if we demand absolute IRIs, folks will get around it >> with sed scripts and the like, but it will be an unnecessary pain. > > A very good point Eric, personally I hadn't came across this with N-Triples yet due to my own use-cases so far, although I guess in hindsight I can see uses for relative IRIs here too.. > > Jury's out for me on this one I'm afraid, can't weigh up the cost / possible ambiguity of relative IRIs vs having a simple unambiguous format. > > Saying that.. I think we can reasonably expect people only to use relative IRIs on the web, and not come crying because they've used them in a base-less environment..! Most (all?) of the other RDF syntaxes already allow for relative IRIs, so it doesn't add any new requirement to a system that can already handle RDF. I agree with Eric that it's useful, I'm not sure whether there will be systems that only consume NTriples though. - Steve -- Steve Harris, CTO, Garlik Limited 1-3 Halford Road, Richmond, TW10 6AW, UK +44 20 8439 8203 http://www.garlik.com/ Registered in England and Wales 535 7233 VAT # 849 0517 11 Registered office: Thames House, Portsmouth Road, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9AD
Received on Saturday, 2 April 2011 00:35:34 UTC