Re: What to do about namespace derived URI refs... (long)

From: <Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com>

Although namespace URIs are themselves not expected to resolve to a content
stream, URLs *are* (that's what makes them URLs!) and an HTTP URI is a URL
and therefore IMO it is an error if it does *not* resolve to a content
stream.

Seth Russell:

That is my opionion too.

Patrick.Stickler :

Please, let's abandon the use of HTTP URIs for namespace identity!
Namespaces, vocabularies, ontologies, etc. are *abstract* resources and thus
should be defined using non-URL URIs! If one wishes to then specify one or
more URLs for schemas or other content streams which provide explicit
definition of, information about, realizations of, or constraints upon those
abstract resources, great, but let's stop using URI schemes intended for
identifying content streams to identify abstract resources!

Seth Russell:

I totally agree.  There is another very good reason not to identify abstract
things with URL's.  If we persist in doing so, we are creating a giant
confusion because there will really be two different things that are
identified with the same name.  This is more than just a philosophical point
: there is a practical thing that we will want to do (down the pike a bit)
where this confusion will start to hurt.  People visit web pages and book
mark them.  The process of bookmarking will start to create a RDF streams of
bookmarks.  It is almost unavoidable that tools will use the URL of the web
page to in the about=URI attribute in the RDF bookmark.  So that naturally
if a web page exists, the RDF\URI for that web page must be URL that
resolves to it.  But if the web page is describing an abstract entity [see
below], and some author decides to coin the URI for that abstract entity to
be his web page URL; then the RDF cannot tell the difference between
descriptions of the abstract thing and descriptions of web page.

Patrick.Stickler :

* By allowing the authority to be not only a host but a user, an individual
is able to define and publish personal ontologies without having to first
secure a domain name, etc. For RDF/RDF Schema/DAML/etc., one would simply
use the HRN URNs in all  statements. E.g.:

Seth Russell:

I would encourage you to go through the formal process of registering 'hrn'
as a official URN and would be glad to lend whatever assistance I can in
this regard.  But why something obscure like 'hrn' why not name this schema
'name'  ... we deserve to have legitimate names don't we ?   Sean's tag
proposal is also a workable option, imho.  But I don't think we need both ..
one or the other would do.

Seth Russell

language: Semenglish

Identity
    semName "Identity"
    semUri "urn:name:robustai.net/concepts/Identity"
    seeUrl  http://robustai.net/ai/identity.htm .

Received on Wednesday, 6 June 2001 12:16:32 UTC