- From: T.Heath <T.Heath@open.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 18:05:46 +0100
- To: <semantic-web@w3.org>
Hi all, I've got an httpRange-14 related question, and was hoping someone might be able to help; apologies if this is going over old ground, I've read and read and am still no clearer. Ok, so here's the situation: you want to make some RDF statements about your favourite pub (lets call it "The Red Lion"), and so you need a URI to identify it. - Option 1: you mint your own URI, something like [1], even though this URI is only really used to identify that pub by you, and you're therefore guilty of not avoiding URI aliases [2]. - Option 2: the pub has a website [3], so you use that URL as your URI. Then when the URI is dereferenced some information about the pub is returned. The pub hasn't quite got around to providing an RDF description of itself on the site, but at least a human with a browser can read the pub menu, and you haven't created unnecessary URI aliases. Clearly Option 2 seems best, right? Well, not if you read the TAG advice about minting URIs [4]. At least according to my reading of [4] then if a GET request to the pub website [3] returns an HTTP 2xx, then the URI refers to an "information resource" (i.e. the pub homepage in this case), NOT to the pub itself. So, when you make all your RDF statements with that URI as your subject, then you're actually making statements about the pub homepage, not the pub itself. Or have I missed something?? Does anyone have an elegant solution to this problem? DualUseUris [5] sound great if we were talking about my own site, but in this case it would require me to persuade the pub landlord to set up content negotiation on their server(!). You can imagine the response: "Content what? You're havin' a laugh mate!". Am I best off just minting my own, and ignoring the consequences? What about adding a fragment to the existing URL to distinguish the URL from the URI, even though it will have no effect when the URI is dereferenced (again, unless I get technical with the landlord)? What about minting my own like [7] and configuring the server at mydomain.com to reply to dereference attempts with HTTP 303 and the URL of the pub? Any help very greatly appreciated, Thanks, Tom. Supplementary Question: 1. Does an RDF Document count as an information resource? I.e. if you dereference a URI and get HTTP2xx and some RDF back, then does that imply that statements about that URI are statements about the RDF Document, rather than the thing described in the RDF? [1] http://mydomain.com/things/theredlion [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#uri-aliases [3] http://www.theredlion.co.uk/ [4] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/issues.html#httpRange-14 [5] http://esw.w3.org/topic/DualUseUri [6] http://www.theredlion.co.uk/#uri [1] http://mydomain.com/things/http//www/theredlion/co/uk/ -- Tom Heath PhD Student Knowledge Media Institute The Open University Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK7 6AA United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1908 653565 Fax: +44 (0)1908 653169 Web: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/tom Email: t.heath@open.ac.uk Jabber: t.heath%open.ac.uk@buddyspace.org
Received on Thursday, 21 September 2006 17:06:00 UTC