RE: "Resource" (RDF vocabulary definitions)

> Here's my slightly off-topic two cents worth:
> "Resource" is a very unfortunate choice of words.  In my
> mind it has always denoted something which can be found
>on the internet, which would suggest that it is
> "knowledge". i.e., propositions which state facts about
> existents.

On the web "resource" means something that is represented on the internet.
The document (whether an RDF document, a HTML document, or whatever) you get
from browsing is a representation of a resource. (See
http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/).

Hence a web resource is the existent identified by a URI, not the knowledge
(or for that matter untruths :) that you may be able to obtain by
dereferencing the URI (though not all URIs can be dereferenced).

This makes particular sense when you consider that you may not just GET a
document, but may interact with a resource using POST. For example, a
web-based mail service like hotmail would have a resource that enabled you
to send an email, but you wouldn't "download" that resource as such.

RDF inherits the term since it is intended to be used on the web.

Received on Thursday, 21 November 2002 09:28:38 UTC