Re: Comments on draft-hollenbeck-ietf-xml-guidelines-02.txt

On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 01:56:57PM -0700, Tim Bray wrote:
> Michael Mealling wrote:
> [on why-URNs?]
> >Because it doesn't create a single point of failure for when that
> >resource is no longer available. This probably won't be a consideration
> >for most things but for highly used protocols it very well could be 
> >an issue.
> 
> We're mostly in agreement, but for the record I've always had a hard 
> time believing that URNs will actually be more reliable/persistent in 
> practice; the causes of URL breakage are mostly incompetence and 
> stupidity, and a guaranteed level of indirection may not succeed in 
> routing around this.

Well, for the record, the point was never the level of indirection but
the fact that in order to get a chunk of the namespace you have to
explain how you're going to gaurantee that the names are never
reassigned and that you explicitly understand what it means to
be a URN. That's why RFC 2141 never even discusses resolution.

http://purl.org/ doesn't tell me anything about how persistent it might be.
urn:pin:1 does because the namespace _requires_ it. Hence I know that
if something screwes up it wasn't my improper assumption about
persistence.....

> >Weeeelll, the evidence I've seen suggests that there are a _large_
> >number of people using URNs as namespace names instead. I think every
> >single namespace used in MS Office uses a URN (albiet an unregistered one!)
> >I think every web services example from IBM I've seen is using them.
> 
> Yeah, the MS Office practice is really egregious in my view.

IMHO, I think the usage is fine. The namespace needs to be registered but
it seems to work for them....

> >>>P.S. I though the TAG was going to defer to the URI group URI related 
> >>>issues? At least that's they way it was represented to me....
> >>
> >>It increasingly seems like *everything* is a URI-related issue.  Only 
> >>half kidding. -Tim
> >
> >My favorite definition for the web was one TimBL used a long time ago:
> >"The Web is the set of 'things' that can be identified by a URI" (and that
> >included physical objects!).  So, while you're only half kidding, I 
> >actually prefer the idea. ;-)
> 
> Aha! Thus we can disband the TAG and most of the W3C and the IETF HTTP 
> work and turn all the work over to the URI group and go back to writing 
> code and taking vacations.  I *like* this approach:)  -Tim

I said I liked it. I didn't say it was sufficient! ;-)

-MM

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | urn:pin:1
michael@neonym.net      |                              | http://www.neonym.net

Received on Tuesday, 30 April 2002 17:05:23 UTC