Re: a recommendation - Received on Thursday, 18 April 2002 14:01:42 EDT

You said, "xml:base does not provide this level of redundancy.  "  But, even
if it did I would still stand by my suggestion.  There are hundreds of
millions of "simple" websites that use <base . . . > and will likely use
<base . . . > for decades.

Personally I love XML when its used for RSS type functions.  I've also
devised my own XML tags for sports before SportsML was devised.  But,
"xml:base . . . " has never been needed in anything I've done so far.  It's
probably a wonderful thing - but I have no clue about it's use or value.

What I do recall is DNS failed and immediately the thousands of web pages on
my own little website were unavailable.  During that short period of time I
directed several people to my website via the dotnum.  But, it was
impossible to walk them through more than a single page since no links
worked.

If my suggestion for the dotnum addition to the <base . . . > tag was
implemented, all links would have worked.  As I did before, I could give out
the dotnum to get customers and prospects started.

Being able to walk my site in a national emergency would mean nothing.  But,
being able to walk a government site during that emergency could be
life-saving.

In theory it would be great if DNS always worked.  And for the most part it
does work.  But, we live in a different world today than before 9/11 and
we've already experienced DNS attacks and DNS failure.

My simple suggestion would have solved my problem just as long as routers
could get to the static dotnum I needed.  A complete route failure is far
less likely to occur than DNS failure.  In fact, a site can experience
individual DNS failure relatively easy when switching among different
vendors.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ernest Cline" <ernestcline@mindspring.com>
To: "Christian Wolfgang Hujer" <Christian.Hujer@itcqis.com>; "Fastpitch
Central - Bill" <bill@fastpitchcentral.com>; <www-html@w3.org>
Cc: <www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 7:58 AM
Subject: Re: a recommendation - Received on Thursday, 18 April 2002 14:01:42
EDT


>
>
>
> > [Original Message]
> > From: Christian Wolfgang Hujer <Christian.Hujer@itcqis.com>
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > I didn't read the thread, though have some annotations:
> >
> > Am Mittwoch, 3. Dezember 2003 08:00 schrieb Fastpitch Central - Bill:
> > > Frank Tobin said:
> > >
> > > It's not smart to have the content layer start making up ad-hoc
> solutions
> > > for problems in the code/protocol layer.  Furthermore, how would a
> client
> > > even receive the page that has this information in it, if it's not
> > > addressable with an A record?  Catch 22.
> > I agree, the IP address still works - as long as the base hasn't been
> tampered
> > with unwisely. <base href="/groups/" /> works fine, while <base
> > href="http://myserver/groups/" /> will break down if the DNS fails.
> > But nearly the whole internet breaks down when the DNS fails... *eg*
> > Wise those running their own forwarding caching DNS servers for they
keep
> > the internet more redundant and reduce the traffic.
> >
> > > I for one could search around and type the "dotnum" into the client
> browser
> > > to get the website started.  And, if my <base ...> tag modification
> were in
> > > place I could then surf the site without any problems.
> > Well, they're obsolete now.
> > <base/> has died.
> > Long live @xml:base!
> > ;-)
> >
> >
> > > If the <base . . .> tag suggestion I made was accepted then folks
would
> at
> > > least have an option.  Businesses and government agencies could have
> > > their dotnum posted in emergencies.  They could give out the dotnum
> > > whenever appropriate in those, hopefully rare, emergency situations.
> > Perhaps before continuing any discussion about <base/>, you should
> > become familiar with the XML Base recommendation and see whether the
> > problem you're talking of still exists in XML Base.
>
> I did go back and read the proposal. The idea is interesting, but I fail
> to see why a backup base URI should be restricted to just dotnums
> if references cannot be resolved according to the primary base URI .
> Suppose for example a site which has mirrors on other sites.  It would
> be useful if all of the mirrors could also be referred to in the base.
>
> xml:base does not provide this level of redundancy.  If it were provided
> that would probably be the place to do it, but while the benefits are easy
> to perceive, I also see potential problems.
> 1) More complicated code needed to resolve URIs.
> 2) A security problem at one base becomes a problem for all.
> 3) When and how often does a user agent need to pick a base?
> 4) Maintaining synchronicity of the bases.
> 5) In the case of a dotnum level redundant base URI, how does
>    this affect load-leveling servers that pass off requests against one
>    name to multiple IP's?
>
> I've sent a copy of this to www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org
> as I believe that is the appropriate list to discuss this idea.
> At this point while its interesting, I'm not certain if the benefits
> outweigh the potential problems, and while I know enough to
> perceive some of the problems, I don't know enough to be
> able to judge how serious they are.
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 3 December 2003 10:36:23 UTC