- From: Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) <dbooth@hp.com>
- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 23:44:08 -0400
- To: "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>, <public-swbp-wg@w3.org>
> From: Dan Connolly > . . . > Pat Hayes wrote: > > My current > > understanding is that an information resource is some thing > > that can > > be transmitted over a network by a transfer protocol. On this > > understanding, one could argue that a word was an information > > resource. > > On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:40:20 -0400 Booth, David wrote: > > It sounds like you are mainly disagreeing with the TAG's guidance. > > For what it's worth, I think Pat's position is consistent > with the TAG's position (i.e. the W3C's position, since > webarch is now a W3C Recommendation). I'm surprised and baffled, since I thought Pat argued that it is okay for a URI to be used both as a name for a person and a name for a document that describes that person. But I guess you're referring to this one point about a word being an information resource. > . . . The definition of "Information Resource" that W3C > endorses[10] is: > . . . > http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/#def-information-resource > > I don't think that means that words are not information resources. I think it may depend on what you mean by "words". If http://example.org/doc.html identifies a single resource, and the associated document is updated to correct typos, then clearly http://example.org/doc.html is identifying more than just the words that are *currently* served from that URI: it is identifying a document *abstraction*, rather than a particular document instance or a particular set of words. I don't see how "all of [the] essential characteristics"[10] of that document *abstraction* can be "conveyed in a message"[10]. Similarly, if http://weather.example.com/oaxaca identifies a single resource that is "a periodically updated report on the weather in Oaxaca"[10], then I don't see how "all of [the] essential characteristics"[10] of that periodically updated report can be "conveyed in a message"[10]. Because "information resources" can return different "representations" at different times (even if some happen to return the same representation every time), it seems to me that "information resources" are by their very nature abstract. Clearly the notion of an "information resource" is modeled after the real life notion of the contents of a (logical) disk region, on a Web server, that is associated with a URI "racine". (The "racine" is all of the URI except the fragment identifier.[11]) The server is configured to return those contents, whatever they are, when the URI racine is dereferenced. And those contents may change over time! Thus, the URI racine is not identifying any *particular* contents, it is identifying the logical *location* where those contents are stored, and the server provides whatever contents happen to be stored there at the moment they are requested. In fact, it is not even possible on the Web to create a URI that is permanently bound to a single document instance that can never change: it is *always* possible to change the server configuration or domain IP mapping to cause a different document instance to be served. In other words, an http URI on the real Web identifies a logical *location* whose content *always* has the potential of changing. Similarly (I argue), an "information resource" is *necessarily* abstract. Thus, if something is not abstract, then it cannot be an "information resource". So returning to your comment about whether a word could be an "information resource", it depends on what you mean by "word". If an alternate spelling of "color" is "colour", then we are referring to an abstract notion of a word, whose spelling may vary. However, if you are referring to particular sequence of characters that can be transmitted over the network, that is a *concrete* notion of "word", and thus cannot be an "information resource". > > I tried to cover this in a recent submission to IRW2006... > > [[ > Note that the TAG has not taken a position on whether > w:InformationResource intersects with rdf:Property. ]] > -- "An analysis of httpRange-14" section > http://www.w3.org/2006/04/irw65/urisym#hr14 Great paper! [8] TAG httpRange-14 decision: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Jun/0039.html [9] Tim Bray's proposed definition of "information resource": http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jul/0377.html [10] WebArch definition of "information resource": http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/#def-information-resource [11] Definition of "racine": http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/log#racine David Booth
Received on Saturday, 29 April 2006 03:53:56 UTC