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

>Sandro,
>
>You should read it well: Chris speaks about "the description.......that
>identifies....". That is not necessarily a name.

True, but Sando's point is that this description 
is returned when you use a particular name (URI) 
to access the thing identified. If you use a 
different name of the very same thing, you may 
well get a different description returned. So the 
description is OF the thing identified, but is 
ASSOCIATED with the name, in the sense that only 
this name may get this particular description 
returned to you by HTTP.

What bothers me is the idea that a description 
can be said to be 'identifying', which suggests 
(especially in this context where URIs are called 
'identifiers') that it contains enough 
information to uniquely identify the resource, 
which is likely to often not be the case.

>  I can give you the
>description:
>1) is a guy
>2) sits at the bar
>3) wears a hat
>etc
>and that identifies a person of which I do not know the name. We call that
>descriptive identification.
>
>As I said, many things don't even have a name.

True, but then they will never have such a description returned.

>  And besides that, some Mr
>Shakespeare once said "what's in a name? That which we call a rose by any
>other name would smell as sweet."

But you might get a different description of it 
when you call it 'rosa centifolia'.

Pat

>
>Regards,
>Hans
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Sandro Hawke [mailto:sandro@w3.org]
>Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 22:41
>To: Hans Teijgeler
>Cc: 'Sandro Hawke'; 'Chris Bizer'; 'Frank Manola'; 'Tim Berners-Lee';
>www-tag@w3.org; semantic-web@w3.org; 'Linking Open Data'
>Subject: RE: How to name what you get back? was: Terminology Question
>concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data
>
>
>"Hans Teijgeler" <hans.teijgeler@quicknet.nl> writes:
>>  The name is just one of a multitude of aspects, and besides that there
>>  are many things without a name (just an ID).
>
>Chris started this by asking:
>     "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."
>
>That "specific URI that identifies this non-information resource" --
>that's "a name", isn't it?   That's what I understand a name to be.
>
>       -- Sandro
>
>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: semantic-web-request@w3.org [mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org]
>>  On Behalf Of Sandro Hawke
>>  Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 20:17
>>  To: Chris Bizer
>>  Cc: Frank Manola; 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
>>
>>
>>
>>  "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
>>
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Received on Thursday, 26 July 2007 22:02:28 UTC