Re: My 2c on scheme abuse

Miles,

Miles Sabin wrote:
> Sadly HTTP URLs _will_ be resolved even when that's unnecessary
> for them to be meaningful as bare identifiers. And if they are,
> then servers (particularly ones hosting extremely popular DTDs
> or namespaces) might well be in trouble.

Will they be resolved by the origin server enough that it's a problem? 
How do you know?

> xml-dev's RDDL or anything similar, if widely adopted, would put
> namespaces more or less on a par with DTDs on the 'XML parsers
> running off to get stuff' front.

I couldn't disagree more.  It is a requirement on validating parsers
that the DTD be retrieved.  It is not a requirement on any existing
piece of software that a representation of an XML namespace be
retrieved.

> These aren't problems with
> either DTDs or namespace URIs per se. The problem is using a
> protocol (and, by extension, encoding that protocol in an
> identifier via a scheme) which doesn't support distribution and
> replication in a way which is appropriate for this kind of
> situation.

The architecture of the Web, and the design of URIs and HTTP, is meant
to accomdate *exactly* this situation.  What exactly does HTTP not do
that you need?

> You've mentioned an Akamai-type solutions to this problem. I
> don't see how that's supposed to help ... could you elaborate?

Just that URL resolution (including HTTP URLs) need not ever reach the
origin server.

MB

Received on Monday, 5 February 2001 11:31:53 UTC