RE: Qualities of URLs and resources

There are some concepts that explicitly are not resources,
e.g. the concept of a "URI" or the concept of a "property".
Like URI's and properties, a binding is not
something that is identified by a URI, and is not something
to which you can apply requests.  Instead, a binding
is just a term we use to talk about how a collection 
resource behaves, e.g. if at time T, a collection resource has a
binding named "foo" to a resource with DAV:resourceid "xxx", then
this is just a shorthand for saying that a
depth:1 PROPFIND at time T on any URL that is mapped to that collection
will return a DAV:response with a DAV:href whose value is 
"<that URL>/foo" and with a DAV:resourceid whose value is "xxx".

In other words, all URI's that are mapped to that collection at time
T will have a member named foo, and the DAV:resourceid of that member
will be "xxx".

Cheers,
Geoff


-----Original Message-----
From: Roy T. Fielding [mailto:fielding@kiwi.ICS.UCI.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2000 4:51 PM
To: Slein, Judith A
Cc: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
Subject: Re: Qualities of URLs and resources 


>In response to your comments about the nature of resources, we plan to
>remove from the binding spec all language that suggests that resources are
>storage entities.  We think that otherwise, the spec is consistent with the
>view that a resource is a mapping function.
>
>We will change the definition of binding to state explicitly that it is not
>a resource, but is rather part of the state of a collection resource.
>Although I think this conflicts with your position, it at least makes our
>position clearer.

Almost.  Anything that is identifiable by a URI is a resource, which
pretty much covers everything that can be identified as a concept.
So, you are better off not explicitly saying that a binding is not
a resource.  What you want to say is simply that the target of the
bind requests is the collection resource, and the bindings are considered
to be part of the state of that collection for the purposes of those
requests.  Whether or not those bindings identify a resource, or are
resources in themselves, is not relevent during the scope of the
client/server conversation.

....Roy

Received on Thursday, 24 February 2000 17:51:10 UTC