Re: ungetable http URIs

On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:

>> I think things that don't meet those requirements should get ungetable
>> URIs.

> What kind of URIs wouldn't meet those requirements, IMO? [not caustic,
> just curious]

I think its generally pretty clear whether things can be expressed as bits
or not.  JPEG image? bits. Oil painting on canvas? not bits.  There are
some digital artifacts whose bits are constantly changing or even never
the same, such as websites, but those are still bits (in fact, HTTP
can provide metadata for those bits that lets you know whether they are
static or dynamic).  I don't have any objection to things that can be
expressed as bits being given gettable URIs, even if they are not
available at those URIs.

The other fringe case is internal nodes in RDF data structures.  I'm not
sure what the current consensus on this is, but on systems that implement
b-nodes they can be blank, and not have any URI.  If, for some reason,
they do need URIs assigned, then I think ungettable ones would be
appropriate.

Nick

Received on Tuesday, 2 December 2003 10:42:21 UTC