- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 23:30:25 -0500
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- CC: timbl@w3.org, fielding@ics.uci.edu, Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no, moore@cs.utk.edu, uri@bunyip.com, lassila@w3.org, swick@w3.org, tbray@textuality.com, jeanpa@microsoft.com, cmsmcq@uic.edu, dsr@w3.org, lehors@w3.org, ij@w3.org
Larry Masinter wrote: > > Dan, > > If you had control over this, which would you prefer? And why? If it were just up to me, I'd choose URI (for the scheme registry, process, and syntax drafts) because I find the word 'identifier' more descriptive of the concept of "string/symbol that refers to a resource." The following explanation made sense when I first read it, and still seems to make sense to me: =========== Name or Address, or Identifier? Conventionally, a "name" has tended to mean a logical way of referring to an object in some abstract name space, while the term "address" has been used for something which specifies the physical location. The term "unique identifier" generally referred to a name which was guaranteed to be unique but had little significance as regards the logical name or physical address. A name server was used to convert names or unique identifiers into addresses. With wide-area distributed systems, this distinction blurs. Locally, things which at first look like physical addresses develop more and more levels of translation, so that they cease to give the actual location of the object. At the same time, a logical name or a unique identifier must contain some information which allows the name server to know where to start looking. In a global context, for example "1237159242346244234232342342423468762342368" might well be unique, but it contains insufficient (apparent) structure for a name server to look it up. The name "info.cern.ch" has a structure which allows a search to be made in several stages. In fact, practical systems using unique identifiers generally hide within them some clues for the name server, such as a node name. A hypertext link to a document ought to be specified using the most logical name as opposed to a physical address. This is (almost) the only way of getting over the problem of documents being physically moved. As the naming scheme becomes more abstract, resolving the name becomes less of a simple look-up and more of a search. One expects in practice the translation of a document name taking several stages as the name becomes less abstract and more physical. http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Naming.html Tim BL 1991 ============== Hmmm... the original WAIS documentation had some similar stuff in an article about document identifiers, but I can't find it anywhere on the web! -- Dan http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
Received on Friday, 24 October 1997 00:32:14 UTC