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

"Chris Bizer" <chris@bizer.de> writes:
> 
> 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".

"Associated Description" is okay, but it's rather too broad, I think.
Clearly things have other kinds of associate descriptions than this
kind.

Because you're talking about relating the thing-itself to some
information-content, I think it's important to bring in some reference
to naming.   Yes, the content is associated with the thing, but it's
much more associated with the thing's name.   

example:
      I have no idea what name-content is out there about me.   I
      publish some stuff via my primary work URI for myself, but who
      knows what is published at other URIs?   Maybe I should have a
      personal-life URI for myself, and set up some other name-content
      there?

example:
      I gathered all the name-content I could find about Tim.   There
      were seven URIs, but four of them didn't return RDF.   Actually,
      some of his name-content is pretty good.

Your example:
      A basic tenet of Linked Data is to use RDF links to interlink
      name-content from different data sources.

Some more writing:
      The key idea of Linked Data is that things mentioned in data
      should be given web-style names (URIs), and dereferencing those
      URIs should give back more data about the named thing.  The
      content you get back from dereferencing a particular name is
      sometimes called the "name-content".  This material is published
      by the people who own the URI used as a name, and they have
      insentive (and some would say a responsibility) to publish useful
      and accurate information.  If they fail to do so, people will tend
      to use other names for the things in their own published content,
      so that their users get better name-content when they want it.

It's still not perfect -- it's not really self-explanitory -- but I
think it's better than the other terms I've seen suggested here.  (Some
longer, more self-explanitory terms: "Name-Owner's Published
Information", "Name-Owner's Associated Page", "Name's Authoritative
Information", etc...)

      -- Sandro

[1] http://www.w3.org/People/Sandro/data#SandroHawke

Received on Thursday, 26 July 2007 18:18:31 UTC