Re: A simple question....

Jonas Liljegren wrote:
> The semantic of the URI is not predefined. It could represent a thing,
> not connected to the web. It could represent a person. In those cases,
> the content of the URI is NOT the resource.

That's very right.

> But it would be nice if there was a standard as to the
> intrepretation. In this way:
>   * If the URI is recognized as an retrievable document, the resource
>     IS that document.
>   * If the URI is not an retrievable document (an URL), it's abstract
>     for you.

I guess it is a 'de facto' interpretation,
to say that a resource you CAN'T retrieve is abstract for you
(even if the resource might be retrievable in some other context).
And if you can retrieve it, you can hopefully get a mime type.

> Any given implementation will only support a subset of all the types
> of URIs. It could know what types it can retrieve, what types
> represent "the outside world", etc. But new types could be
> invented. Previously unaccessible objects, like bar-code numbers,
> could be made accessible by a new internet service, giving metadata
> about the product.

Yes, but you will never get the product !
The codebar URI can identify a product, since there is a one-to-one relation between them,
but it can't dereference to the product itself, only to information about it.
So I think the important thing is to make the difference between

 * URI we use to identify a piece of (meta)data (retrievable or not)

 * URI we use to identify a 'real' object,
   and which can perhaps be dereferenced to some metadata ABOUT that object.

I guess this is application dependant :
some application will be interested in the sociol security file of a person,
so the SSN-schema URIs will be in the first category above ;
some other could use the SN-schema to identid=fy persons, in which case
these URIs will be in the second category.

Hope this'll help

  Pierre-Antoine

Received on Monday, 22 November 1999 03:53:26 UTC