- From: Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>
- Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2002 00:27:13 -0700
- To: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@microsoft.com>, WWW TAG <www-tag@w3.org>
- CC: Patrick Stickler <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>
Joshua Allen wrote: > >... > > Maybe that is because the discussion has veered off-topic. There is no > question that HTTP returns a representation of a resource. However, > that does not mean that URIs using the http: scheme should be used for > things other than web pages. There is nothing in HTTP specialized for "web pages" and many people use it for things completely unlike Web Pages. Microsoft, in particular, is a leader in using it for e.g. email and travel reservations. > ... HTTP is just one protocol, with semantics > that are useful for a finite set of circumstances. URIs in practice > utilize many schemes besides just http:. Saying that all resources can > or should be identified with http: URIs is completely insane. It is indisputably true that all resources CAN be identified with http URIs. After all an identifier is just a string and the protocol does not effect the binding of identifiers to abstract objects. Whether everything "should" be identified with http: URIs is a debate worth having. Even without going that far we can observe that HTTP URIs have the nice property that it is extremely easy for someone with a web server and the appropriate domain name to scalably and globally associate metadata in the form of representations with resources. urn: URIs do not have that nice property and in my mind are thus strictly inferior. -- Come discuss XML and REST web services at: Open Source Conference: July 22-26, 2002, conferences.oreillynet.com Extreme Markup: Aug 4-9, 2002, www.extrememarkup.com/extreme/
Received on Friday, 5 July 2002 03:27:51 UTC