Re: URIs vs. URIviews (was: Agenda for RDFCore WG Telecon 2002-02-15)

On 2002-02-15 3:57, "ext Aaron Swartz" <me@aaronsw.com> wrote:


>> I'd like to hear from the folks with knowledge of user communities
>> (PRISM, DC, CC/PP, ...) their reaction to this suggestion.
> 
> I've explained this to the Dublin Core and they are continuing to use (as
> they have always done) namespaces without '#'s.

I've held off making any particular comments to this thread, both
because I think Brian's suggested resolution is OK (not that there
isn't an issue) and because even if we wanted to try to tackle this,
it's probably out of scope (certainly for this WG under the current
charter).

There seem to be two issues here (1) URIrefs or just URIs, and
(2) should vocabulary terms be denoted by URIrefs or just URIs.
These are not the same. We should not change RDF's present
view regarding #1. URIrefs are essential. We cannot resolve
#2, it is out of scope and it is not RDF's task to dictate
such things.

I do, though, agree with Aaron that the use of URIrefs to denote
vocabulary terms is just plain wrong (even silly). Vocabulary
terms are abstract entities, which may have various definitions
in various web resources (schemas) which can be pointed to by
URIrefs, but "live" above and outside of any given MIME encoding
or specific stream of bytes (for the record, I think DC is doing
things the "right" way by not using '#' in vocabulary term URIs ;-)

Yes, I know that's topic of hot debate and many folks think
differently -- which is why I didn't choose to muddy the waters
of this particular thread with such a debate (let's take it
outside ;-)

--

Anyway, let's drop this debate, please, at this time and in
this context. We won't resolve it. We will only waste valuable
cycles.

I think we can all agree that there is a problem, but we won't
fix it by changing RDF -- because even if some feel that '#' in
vocabulary term URIs is wrong, we still need to be able to
describe fragment resources, so URIrefs are not wrong in general
and Brian's proposed resolution, deferring this known problemmatic
issue to the TAG or other WG is, I think, the right way to go.

Cheers,

Patrick

--
               
Patrick Stickler              Phone: +358 50 483 9453
Senior Research Scientist     Fax:   +358 7180 35409
Nokia Research Center         Email: patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Friday, 15 February 2002 02:25:16 UTC