RE: Possible new issue: Things with and without identity?

> From: uri-request@w3.org [mailto:uri-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Roy T.
> Fielding
> Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 2:46 PM
> To: Stefan Eissing
> Cc: Miles Sabin; uri@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Possible new issue: Things with and without identity?
>
>
>
> > WebDAV working group decided to call a URL without a resource
> > (e.g. 404 on GET) an "unmapped URL".
>
> WebDAV got that wrong.  The filesystem object at the end of a request
> is not the resource -- it is only one representation of the resource.

IMHO, it may or may not "be" the resource, but it certainly is *not* a
representation of the resource. It may *contain* a representation of the
resource, though.

> The mapping is the resource and the resource always exists, which is
> is why 404 Not Found does not imply that the resource does not exist,
> but rather says that no current representation of the resource exists
> at the time of the request.

Yes.

> WebDAV talks about it that way because, for the purpose of authoring,
> it doesn't matter whether there is a distinction between the resource
> and the current representation of that resource -- they become effectively
> the same thing because WebDAV actions exist at an instant in time and
> only work on resources that are directly authorable (one-to-one
> relationship between representation and resource).

That's news to me. Are you saying that WebDAV resources may not vary
depending on the headers in a GET request?

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