RE: How to name what you get back? was: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data

Hi Chris,

My 2 cts: "derefinfo", being information that is made available upon
dereferencing. 

Cheers,
Hans

-----Original Message-----
From: semantic-web-request@w3.org [mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Chris Bizer
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 17:48
To: Frank Manola
Cc: Tim Berners-Lee; www-tag@w3.org; semantic-web@w3.org; Linking Open Data
Subject: How to name what you get back? was: Terminology Question concerning
Web Architecture and Linked Data


Hi Frank, Pat and Bernard,

thanks a lot for all your ideas and comments.

So what we are having on the table right now is a definition:

"The term XXX refers to the description of a non-information resource that a
client obtains by dereferencing a specific URI that identifies this
non-information resource."

and various proposals for the term:

Pat Hayes:
- represented description
- redirected description
- redescription
- transmit
- infon

Frank Manola
- associated representation

Bernard Vatant:
- description

Some (of course subjective) comments: Like Bernard already stated,
"redescription" sounds temporal. You describe something, then you redescribe
it afterwards. Transmit and infon sound like Sci-Fi to me. 
Redirected description is a good explanation of what is happening, but maybe
a bit to technical, process-oriented.
I think Frank's term "representation" does not work from the technical side,
as you get redirected to an information resource, which has a representation
and this representation contains the data we are talking about. But the
representation of this information resource might also contain lots of data
about other resources. For instance, when you think about a vocabulary
definition as in the "Best Practices for Publishing RDF Vocabularies" guide
http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-vocab-pub/. I like Frank's idea of using the word
"associated" as this term in also used throughout the TAG "Dereferencing
HTTP URIs" document
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/httpRange-14/2007-05-31/HttpRange-14.

So, when I try to merge all these ideas and thoughts, I end up with
"associated description".

What do you think about this term?
Anybody strongly disagreeing?

A problem that remains with this term is that it is rather technical and
therefore does not work well as a replacement for data item in the
introduction of our tutorial.

For instance: The sentence "A basic tenet of Linked Data is to use RDF links
to interlink data items from different data sources." would become "A basic
tenet of Linked Data is to use RDF links to interlink associated
descriptions from different data sources." Cough, cough :-)

But anyhow, the term "associated description" will work in the remaining
technical chapters of the tutorial and we can save ourselves in the
introduction by saying "A basic tenet of Linked Data is to use RDF links to
interlink data from different data sources".

Cheers

Chris


--
Chris Bizer
Freie Universität Berlin
Phone: +49 30 838 54057
Mail: chris@bizer.de
Web: www.bizer.de

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Manola" <fmanola@acm.org>
To: "Chris Bizer" <chris@bizer.de>
Cc: "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org>; <www-tag@w3.org>;
<semantic-web@w3.org>; "Linking Open Data" 
<linking-open-data@simile.mit.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 10:44 PM
Subject: Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked
Data



Chris--

This probably indicates that I haven't gone back far enough in the prior
discussion (or still don't understand various details of the Web
architecture), but what's wrong with "representation"?  That is, you're
asking for "a term for "the information which you get about the thing
identified by it when you look up a URI".  I thought what you got back when
you dereferenced a URI was a "representation".  And I thought that the
difference between dereferencing the URI of an information resource vs. that
of a non-information resource is that:

(a) for a non-information resource there's supposed to be some indirection
messaging that goes on between the original dereferencing and you getting a
representation back, and

(b) the representation you get back doesn't contain all the "essential
characteristics" of the identified resource.

But you still get a representation back.  That is in fact what your tutorial
says. Under the heading "Dereferencing HTTP URIs", the last sentence of the
bullet that describes what happens for non- information resources says "In a
second step, the client dereferences this new URI and *gets a
representation* describing the original non- information resource" [my
emphasis].

I think I understand the sort of distinction you're getting at, something
like, as Pat suggests, the difference between getting a copy (of sorts) of
the thing itself vs. getting a "description" (in some sense) of it, but if
that's it, I'm not sure an entirely new piece of terminology is what's
needed.  Operationally the only way we have of knowing whether a URI names
an information resource or a non- information resource is (at least in the
tutorial) whether redirection happens when we dereference it.  In the
scenarios we're talking about, the redirection is (as I understand it)
ultimately to the URI of an *information resource* (with its own URI) that
describes (in some sense) the original non-information resource.  The draft
TAG finding a http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/
httpRange-14/2007-05-31/HttpRange-14 refers to this redirected-to
information resource as an "associated information resource" (without
necessarily intending to introduce that as a defined term).
Following those lines though, how about calling what you're after an
"associated representation"?  That is, when you dereference the URI of a
non-information resource, what you get back (after redirection) is an
"associated representation" (the details of the association being determined
by the details of the redirection).

-Frank

On Jul 25, 2007, at 12:44 PM, Chris Bizer wrote:

> Hi Frank,
>
>> I'd seriously suggest you look for some alternative  to "data item" 
>> for the concept in question.
>
> OK, but this leads to a question which I accutally wanted to try to 
> avoid asking on this list.
>
> Hmm, I will do it anyway and see what happens ;-)
>
> Question 4: What term should we use instead?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
>
> --
> Chris Bizer
> Freie Universität Berlin
> Phone: +49 30 838 54057
> Mail: chris@bizer.de
> Web: www.bizer.de
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Manola" <fmanola@acm.org>
> To: "Chris Bizer" <chris@bizer.de>
> Cc: "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org>; <www-tag@w3.org>; <semantic- 
> web@w3.org>; "Linking Open Data" <linking-open-data@simile.mit.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 6:07 PM
> Subject: Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and 
> Linked Data
>
>
>> Chris--
>>
>> I appreciate that we run into terminology conflicts all the time 
>> around here, but I'd seriously suggest you look for some alternative 
>> to "data item" for the concept in question.  An awful lot of people 
>> (particularly those involved with databases) are used to seeing "data  
>> item" refer to something like a property or attribute (like "name" or  
>> "age").  More specifically, they're used to seeing records as  
>> containing multiple data items (or their values).  From that point of  
>> view, the sentence "When you interpret the Web of Data as a set of  
>> interlinked databases, a data item would equal a record in a specific  
>> database." looks particularly strange.  As I say, I understand the  
>> inevitability of terminology conflicts, but ...?
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> --Frank
>>
>> On Jul 25, 2007, at 10:12 AM, Chris Bizer wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi Tim,
>>>
>>>> I can't think of a term for "the information which you get about 
>>>> the thing identified by it  when you look up a URI" which works for 
>>>> me.
>>>
>>>> It has of course the term "Representation" which connects an 
>>>> Information Resource and the (metadata, bits) pair which you get 
>>>> back, which is different.
>>>
>>> As we did not want to repeat the definition all over the tutorial, 
>>> we ended up with a term called "data item".
>>>
>>> Within section 2.1 of the tutorial, we define the term as: "The term 
>>> data items refers to the description of a non-information resource 
>>> that a client obtains by dereferencing a specific URI that 
>>> identifies this non-information resource." (http://
>>> sites.wiwiss.fu- berlin.de/suhl/bizer/pub/LinkedDataTutorial/
>>> #aliases)
>>>
>>> Note that the definition is a bit more specific than your sentence 
>>> above, as it is restricted to non-information resources and not 
>>> things in general (assuming that your term "thing" refers to non- 
>>> information resources as well as information resources).
>>>
>>> We were also struggling to find a good word that matches the concept 
>>> and have chosen "data item" in the end as it somehow relates to the 
>>> overall term "Linked Data" and as we hope that people from the 
>>> database community will understand the second informal definition of 
>>> the term: "When you interpret the Web of Data as a set of 
>>> interlinked databases, a data item would equal a record in a 
>>> specific database."
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>



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Received on Thursday, 26 July 2007 17:27:39 UTC