Re: pound sign vs. slash as final URI delimiter

On Feb 17, 2004, at 14:23, ext Hammond, Tony (ELSLON) wrote:

> ...
> ps/
> I can hear Patrick groaning in the background

Groan...   ;-)


> but it's anyway at least an
> interesting architectural point (the use of fragment identifiers) 
> worthy of
> some discussion. ;)
>

True.

Patrick


>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org
>> [mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Ron Daniel
>> Sent: 16 February 2004 16:08
>> To: 'DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO)'
>> Cc: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
>> Subject: RE: pound sign vs. slash as final URI delimiter
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Bob,
>>
>> My current rule of thumb is to use '/' unless there is some good
>> reason not to. But this is not a strongly held belief.
>>
>> Why do I prefer '/' over '#'?
>> 1) Fragment IDs imply downloading the source document, then
>> picking through
>>    it for the bit you need. For large vocabularies, like many
>> produced by
>>    Government agencies, this would be a performance issue.
>> (Of course,
>>    whether something is actually downloaded just because we
>> have used its
>>    URL as a namespace ID is another issue.)
>> 2) There are some people who are vociferous in maintaining
>> that there is a
>>    very big difference between a resource and a fragment ID,
>> and that RDF is
>>    about describing resources. I am not personally sure of
>> this, but don't
>> see
>>    much harm in using '/'.
>>
>> Why I hesitate to categorically state that '/' should be used
>> instead of
>> '#'?
>> 1) Because # should fit a lot better with picking a predicate
>> out of an
>>    XML document that specifies the namespace.
>>
>> I'd appreciate it if people could clarify things.
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org
>>> [mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of
>>> DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO)
>>> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 7:15 AM
>>> To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
>>> Subject: pound sign vs. slash as final URI delimiter
>>>
>>>
>>> This feels like a beginner question, but after a few searches
>>> I can't find
>>> any discussion of the issue. Let's say I have a namespace
>>> identified by the
>>> URI http://www.example.com/pathname. To identify the name foo
>>> from that
>>> namespace, what are the pros and cons of identifying it
>> with a URI of
>>> http://www.example.com/pathname/foo as opposed to
>>> http://www.example.com/pathname#foo? The pound sign seems to
>>> more clearly
>>> indicate "the following is a name from the namespace named
>> up to this
>>> point," but I see that most references to Dublin Core names (e.g.
>>> http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator) use the slash.
>>>
>>> Perhaps the question is better framed without reference to
>>> syntax: is it
>>> better for a name from a namespace to have it's own complete
>>> URI or for it
>>> to be referenced using a fragment identifier appended to the
>>> URI for its
>>> namespace?
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>>
>>> Bob
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

--

Patrick Stickler
Nokia, Finland
patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Tuesday, 17 February 2004 07:51:44 UTC