Location vs. names

Dear Patrick,

I'm quite interested in that debate, because I entered about the same
one a few weeks ago by posting
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2001Apr/0020.html

the proposed note was clumsy to some respects (according to the numerous
comments we got ;-) but the basic ideas were similar to yours.

A problem is that the distinction is absolutely not taken for granted by W3C people.
Have a look at :
  http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/NameMyth.html

Hence, I guess, the will of the URI WG to make the notion of URL obsolete.
If I had to argue in favor of the URL/URN distinction :

- URLs are defined with a mandatory protocol to *access* the resource
  (note that I wrote *access* and not *retrieve*
   -- some URLs are not "retrievable", e.g. mailto:)
  Of course, the protocol may involve external factors,
  hence a great variability in the "accessing process",
  but semantically speaking , the same (generic) resource is accessed however.

  The protocol, however complex defines a "space",
  and by construction, URLs identify "locations" in that space.
  What "lies" in that location (the resource) is set by the "owner" of the URL;
  it is bound by the protocol (what it can do/transport/provide)
  and by the constraint that the resource be unique -- URLs are *iodentifiers*.

- URNs are defined outside any mandatory protocol. They are just *names*.
  The URN scheme specifies how those names are constructed, and what the can name.

 any comments

  Pierre-Antoine

Received on Friday, 8 June 2001 09:24:36 UTC