RE: Subclass of Thing/Resource

Why can't a person have a URI? I for one am using RDF to talk about abstract
concepts (such as sports, teams, competitors, and so forth). These concepts
are actually more important to me than concrete assets. I am using URN's to
identify them, but I don't see why specific protocols couldn't be defined.
It seems to me that the semantic web faces a fundamental issue, which is how
do you reliably identify abstract things you want to talk about? Note that I
said "reliably", not "canonically", since it may not be possible or
desirable to impose a canonical identification scheme. It would certainly
simplify things, but it might also bring along undesirable baggage such as
centralized object servers.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Guha [mailto:guha@epinions-inc.com]
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 2:34 PM
To: Tim Berners-Lee
Cc: Guha; www-rdf-interest
Subject: Re: Subclass of Thing/Resource


Tim,

 I think many of these questions center around
precisely defining what an RDF Resource Identifier
is supposed to be.

   I agree that we need to distinguish between RDF
Resource identifiers and URIs. A URI is a pretty formal object
(protocol + host + opaque string) whose definition pretty
concretely  constrains what can have a URI. By
this definition, people, places, etc. cannot have URIs.

 On the other hand, it would be very convenient to have
a unique canonical identifier for refering to the one TimBL
or one RalphSwick. In my reading, this is what the RDF
Resource ID is. Everything (including literals, URIs, ...) could
potentially have one of these.

  I do think it would be nice if an application can assume
some kind of structure to these identifiers, but not being
able to do so would not be fatal.

 I agree with you that http://foo.org/bar.rdf#xyz is a lousy
identifier for an object. To me, it just represents a position
is a file.

 In the long run, the object identifier namespace will have
to be like the DNS namespace.

 Reactions?

 guha

Received on Friday, 3 March 2000 18:24:05 UTC