[OT] RE: Using URIs to identify non-information resources

Hi David,

(I added an [OT] to the subject for better filtering)

On 19.08.2005 00:37:05, Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) wrote:
>
>It sounds like you may be misunderstanding my intent.  I don't think
>"centralized service" is a fair characterization of what
>thing-described-by.org intends to do.  Analogy: If a particular ontology
>from a particular site becomes widely used, does that mean it is a
>"centralized service"?  I don't think so.  Anyone is free to use it or
>not as they desire.
- an ontology isn't a service, your "analogy" doesn't work.
- the option to not use a certain service doesn't change the service's
nature.

>The same is true of thing-described-by.org.  Anyone can offer a similar
>service, though obviously better optimization is possible if there are
>fewer such sites to recognize.
so you *are* proposing a centralized service. 

>It is very different from defining a new URI scheme, because it does not
>require any changes to existing software.  It works today.  However, if
>you do wish to change your software to recognize thing-described-by.org
>URIs, then your software can run faster, by opimizing away unnecessary
>HTTP accesses, as described at
>http://thing-described-by.org/#optimizing
AND http://t-d-b.org/ AND http://my-t-d-b.org/ AND http:...

>> and with the TAG compromise, it's 
>> getting really easy to add this type of functionality to rdf 
>> apps directly, without having to rely on an external service 
>> or hard-coded URI-examination.
>
>I don't think that's quite correct.  If you are given an arbitrary http
>URI that you have not seen before, and you want to determine whether it
>is being used to directly identify a Web page at that address or
>indirectly identify something else, it seems to me that you MUST perform
>an HTTP access on that URI to find out whether it returns 2xx (meaning
>it directly identifies a document at that address) or 303, meaning you
>need to look elsewhere to learn what it identfies.  However, if you are
>given a thing-described-by.org URI, you can determine by inspection that
>it does not directly identify a document at that address, because of the
>delegation of authority provided by thing-described-by.org:
>http://thing-described-by.org/#Delegation_of_Authority
>That is a significant optimization.
That seems to be the part that's related to SWBP:
Should this WG propose a mechanism that relies on URI examination?
(Guess my personal opinion ;)

>> (It would be nice though to see a swbpd note about how to
>> best implement the TAG suggestion, possible ways of
>> naming resources so that the 303-mechanism works, . . . .
>
>The question of how to best implement the TAG's suggestion, and how to
>best name resources so that the 303-mechanism works, is *exactly* what I
>am trying to address in suggesting the thing-described-by.org approach!
yeah, but you are proposing it as a service, not as a technique/practice.
and I actually think it'd be more straight-forward to simply tell people
how to adjust their htaccess files to make the 303 mechanism work
directly on their systems. but maybe that's just me.

>AFAICT, thing-described-by.org provides a very practical and scalable
>solution to the problem.  
for "page exists, URI needed" situations:
   yes. (as long as there is no "?" in the page's URL)
   
for automatically generated URIs of individuals:
   an ideal consequence of your proposal (if taken seriously) is that
   every non-info resource should be prefixed with "http://t-d-b.org/?". 
   So, systems creating your URIs would then ideally auto-generate
   pages for requests coming back from your service's 303s. But when
   I have to adjust my apps to prefix internal URIs and to later detect
   incoming requests for theses resources (which means that I have to
   store two URIs, or I have to prefix URIs retrieved from an RDF store,
   or I have to adjust SPARQL queries), I can more easily implement the
   whole mechanism directly without running into issues.

for already existing URIs of non-info resources:
   no. there is no efficient way to "upgrade" existing URIs to your
   service without changing them.
     
(note that I don't want to dis your service, I just don't think swbpd
is the right place to promote it beyond the general technique behind)

regards,
benjamin

--
Benjamin Nowack

Kruppstr. 100
45145 Essen, Germany
http://www.bnode.org/

Received on Friday, 19 August 2005 09:33:51 UTC