RE: [WNET] URIs as primitive queries?

> From: Mark van Assem
> . . .
> Kjetil argued that many agents would probably like somewhat bigger 
> chunks of data at once, e.g. all NounWordSenses of "bank". This could 
> be done by returning the set of NounWordSenses with the Word 
> "bank" on 
> HTTP GETs on the URI:
> 
>    http://wordnet.princeton.edu/wn/wordsense/noun/bank/
> 
> . . . I'm wondering whether this use of URIs is "accepted 
> practice" (or could become such a thing) or "should be avoided at all 
> costs" because the approach mixes the naming of nodes with 
> naming sets of nodes.

I don't see it as naming sets of nodes.  I see it as naming a Web
location where you can get some useful RDF data.  And that URI does not
happen to also be an RDF node in an triple that you previously
encountered.  From this point of view, it is no different in principle
from most regular Web pages that just serve data.

I think the question is how users (and particularly software agents)
would know that they could use such a URI, given that it is not an RDF
node in a published triple.  URIs should normally be treated as opaque,
so you normally can't assume that you can just chop off the "1/" from
the end of the URI in order to get related data.

David Booth

Received on Monday, 27 March 2006 20:25:03 UTC