Re: Valid representations, canonical representations, and what the SW needs from the Web... from Roy T. Fielding on 2003-02-03 (www-archive@w3.org from February 2003)

From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@apache.org>
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 23:52:53 -0800
To: Walden Mathews <waldenm@optonline.net>
Cc: www-archive@w3.org
Message-Id: <7FE9C274-374C-11D7-B19D-000393753936@apache.org>

> Resources which are representations seem to be among the
> most confusing critters in the REST world.  If you have a resource
> that is "the HTML document that describes X", may it be
> identical with its representation dished up on GET, or is the
> bunch of bits that represent "the HTML document..." somehow
> still a shade different from the resource in this case. Kind of
> like 1/8th of a dimension away?  More like an infinite number
> of levels of abstraction.(?)

It is always different in the sense that one is a resource
(identified and accessible) and the other is a result of an action.

> What is your view?

Anything that can be identified can be a resource.  It follows that
you can identify things with very specific constraints on 
representation,
such as a specific version of a document, and give them a URI.

....Roy

Received on Monday, 3 February 2003 03:07:41 UTC