- From: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@microsoft.com>
- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 22:36:07 -0700
- To: "Miles Sabin" <miles@mistral.co.uk>, <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
> That might have been a sustainable position once, but I'm afraid I > don't think it can be now. I don't buy this argument yet. > Many, many things have HTTP interfaces allowing interaction and/or > manipulation. When you use a web interface to a printer are you > manipulating the printer or a document? When you make an online You definitely aren't manipulating the printer. You can't PUT a printer, nor can you GET a printer. > purchase are you dealing with the vendor or a document? You are submitting a document (a purchase order). You have no guarantees that the vendor will ever even see your purchase order or do anything about it. > I think it's better simply not to try and choose between the > candidate referents of a URI and single out one as canonical. Let the > coffee pot URI be ambiguous between the document and the coffee pot, Let's look at it another way; 99.99% of the time, when someone uses an http://uri, they are referring to something that can be GET, PUT, or POSTed (a document). There are maybe 0.001% of cases where the person wants that URI to identify a "thing" and *not* a document. And the cases where someone is using an http URI to refer to a "thing" are completely non-standard and ad-hoc. In other words, these 0.001% of cases could just as easily use tdb: URIs, and they are only polluting the URI space by using http:// improperly. Or look at it yet another way; what clear use-cases exist today for saying that an http:// URI does *not* identify a document? What are the scenarios that we break by saying that an http:// URI always identifies a document? What benefit can justify breaking the "common sense" that an http:// URI identifies something that can be GET, PUT, or POSTed? > you a referent. Document consumers will see a document, and coffee > consumers will see a coffee pot: the two views are compatible. No they are not. How about a consumer (like an RDF database) which is capable of seeing both documents and coffee pots? The whole issue is that the "tdb" of the URI is ambiguous unless you add some extra metadata to disambiguate it. P.S. And forcing a client to do a GET and ask for mime-types for a URI is an absolutely unacceptable disambiguation mechanism. If a URI doesn't identify anything, then why call it an identifier? If the real "identity" comes from the mime-type list proffered through some API, why not call the URI a "switchboard address"?
Received on Wednesday, 10 April 2002 01:36:12 UTC