Re: Announcement: The "info" URI Scheme

On 2003-10-03 09:55, "ext Peter C Davis" <peter.davis@neustar.biz> wrote:

> 
> Garret Wilson wrote:
> 
>> Patrick Stickler wrote:
>> 
>>> But when all one has is a single URI, how do you find out *where*
>>> authoritative descriptive metadata resides, if that URI is not
>>> meaningful to HTTP? That's the problem. If all you have is
>>> uri:foo:blargh how do you know where to go for information about
>>> the thing denoted by that URI, and how do you know that the information
>>> you find is authoritative? And even if you manage to work out a
>>> solution, will that solution scale globally?
>> 
>> 
>> Fine---there needs to be a standard solution for finding out "where
>> authoritative descriptive metadata resides." We can all agree that
>> this is a problem. So?
> 
> Actually, there is a proposal:
> http://www.projectliberty.org/specs/draft-lib-arch-metadata-v1.0-08.pdf
> which uses the DNS and DDDS (http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc3401.txt), which
> solves this in part.

It solves it in theory. But until/unless DDDS is as ubiquitous as
HTTP, it does not count as a solution.

> In particular URIs whose naming authority part is
> domain-based and a special case for the URN scheme.

And as I've pointed out, there is no need for DNS+DDDS. One can
accomplish all of the goals set forth for URNs using HTTP.

C.f. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/uri/2003Jul/0005.html

> While the approached
> defined was intended to solve more specific issues, it can be made more
> generalized. It is scheme and protocol independant.  Whether you choose
> to use HTTP, SMTP, FTP or whatever.

Fine. So it is more talented than HTTP alone (maybe) but are those
extra features really needed so much that it warrants the deployment
of a parallel global resolution infrastructure?

> It also allows for multiple
> representations of metadata, so you describe the URI in multiple
> formats.  It would, IMO, be an error to assume that for a given
> resource, you may only gt *one* metadata document.

If you mean allowing content negotiation in order to get those
authoritative descriptions is different encodings (RDF, N3, XTM,
etc.) sure. No problem with HTTP + URIQA.

Patrick

Received on Friday, 3 October 2003 06:43:59 UTC