Re: URIs & Namespaces

What's wrong with using a base URI and relative URIs?  For example:

Base URI for the namespace: 
http://ErikWildesLocationNamespace.org/placenames/

Name for Berkeley: 
http://ErikWildesLocationNamespace.org/placenames/Berkeley

Presuming you register ErikWildesLocationNamespace.org (not surprisingly 
it's available just now), you get to decide how to allocate URIs 
associated with that DNS name.  You can publish a document, perhaps at 
that base URI, and have it say:

"URIs of the form http://ErikWildesLocationNamespace.org/placenames/XXXXXX 
are names of places.  Permission to allocate new XXXX names is given to 
(specify your rules here).  The owner of these URIs warrants that they 
will remain so associated in perpetuity (at least insofar as he is in a 
position to guarantee that).  Accordingly, while it is >possible< to use 
HTTP to dereference any of the resources identified by these URIs, such 
dereference is not required to establish the association between some XXXX 
and the corresponding place.  See (pointer to your documentation) for how 
such associations are maintained."

You have then what is effectively a namespace, but well grounded in the 
http URI scheme.  Because the DNS name is (hypothetically) assigned to 
you, you are in a position to delegate assignment responsibilities for the 
individual URIs. 

Noah

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Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Received on Monday, 10 December 2007 19:39:54 UTC