Re: "information resource"

I'd like make the following proposal which I hope will address Patrick's 
comment [1] and be acceptable to other parties with an interest in 
Patrick's comment.

1) Replace all occurences of the noun phrase "information resource" with 
the noun phrase "web resource".

2) Replace the defining sentence for the noun phrase "information 
resource" (section 3.1 1st para, 1st sentence) :

  "The term Information Resource refers to resources that convey 
information. Any resource that has a representation is an information 
resource."

with

  "The term Web Resource is applicable to resources for which web 
acesssible representations are available and/or which may be interacted 
with through an exchange of representations."

3) [Optional]  Consider adding a nearby sentence: "Colloquially, Web 
Resources are said to be "on-the-web"."

Best regards

Stuart Williams
--
[1]  
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webarch-comments/2004JulSep/0047.html

Roy T. Fielding wrote:

>
> I agree with the core of Patrick's argument, excerpted below, with
> the minor exception that some web resources are representation sinks
> that have no difficulty processing information that is sent to them,
> even though they don't have representations of their own.  Those are
> significant to the web machinery, but don't participate in the
> information retrieval (hypertext) Web.
>
> Maybe we need to distinguish resources from web resources and from
> hypertext resources?  Or maybe the architecture just doesn't care, and
> we can go back to describing how it works instead of how it might
> be modeled in an abstract but artificial way.
>
> ....Roy
>
> On Sep 9, 2004, at 2:00 AM, <Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com> wrote:
>
>> But the resolution of that confusion need not posit any claims or
>> constraints about the inherent nature of the resource itself, only
>> about the accessibility of representations of that resource.
>>
>> I.e.
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> "resource"         Anything that can be referred to, named, described,
>>                    talked about, etc.
>>
>> "web resource"     A resource which has web accessible representations
>>                    (i.e. is significant to the web machinery).
>>                    "web resource" is a subclass of "resource".
>>
>> "representation"   An octet stream (entity) returned by a server which
>>                    reflects the state of a resource. A representation is
>>                    also a resource, which can be denoted by a distinct
>>                    URI. A representation of a representation (resource)
>>                    corresponds to a bit-equal copy of itself.
>>                    "representation" is a subclass of "web resource".
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> IMO, the above three definitions should be sufficient to clarify the
>> confusion between what a resource is and what resources are relevant to
>> the web and why,  and how representations (the "atomic" resources of
>> the web) relate to the broader set of web resources -- many of which
>> correspond to abstract "bodies of information" such as web pages.
>>
>> Nowhere above is it necessary to say anything about the inherent nature
>> of resources or of web resources, or to posit any kind of class of
>> "information resources" in order to describe the behavior and 
>> architecture
>> of web servers and clients (aside from the atomic, binary nature of
>> representations).
>
>
> On Sep 9, 2004, at 3:51 AM, <Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com> wrote:
>
>> My explicit proposal would be to replace the words "information 
>> resource"
>> with either "web resource" or "web accessible resource" which IMO
>> would coincide more precisely with the actual definition and not
>> potentially imply any position relating to httpRange-14.
>>
> ...
>
>> Anything can be a resource. I am opposed to any constraints by
>> the web architecture on the nature of resources denoted by URIs and
>> for which representations are made web accessible.
>>
>> My view, in a nutshell:
>>
>> Anything can be a resource.
>> Any resource can be denoted by a URI.
>> Any resource can have web accessible representations.
>> A web resource is a resource with web accessible representations.
>> A representation is a resource.
>> A representation can be denoted by a distinct URI.
>> A representation is the atomic primitive of the web.
>> A representation corresponds to a binary data stream.
>> The representation of a representation is a bit-equal copy of itself.
>>
>> The web architecture faciliates interaction with representations of 
>> resources.
>> The semantic web architecture facilitates interaction with 
>> descriptions of resources.
>> The intersection of the web and semantic web architectures are a 
>> shared set of URIs.
>>
>> Patrick
>
>
>

Received on Monday, 20 September 2004 12:52:39 UTC