RE: httpRange-14 , what's the problem

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@microsoft.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 12:35 AM
> To: Tim Bray; www-tag
> Subject: RE: httpRange-14 , what's the problem
> 
> 
> 
> Start with: 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2002Apr/0124.html
> 
> But just to clarify what we are NOT arguing about:
> 
> 1.  Everyone (even RDF) agrees that "http: URIs" should be 
> used to identify resources which are generally lumped 
> together and called
> alternately: hypermedia, hypertext, documents, web pages, and so on.
> 
> 2.  Everyone also agrees that "http: URIs" should be strongly 
> preferred for identifying resources, IF those resources are 
> most naturally dealt with through transfers of 
> representational state.  (In other words, if you envision 
> interacting with the resource primarily through a web browser 
> UI and synchronous request+response pairs, use the http: scheme)
> 
> Those use cases for http: identifiers are well-established.  
> The proponents of expanding the range of http are making 
> three generalized
> arguments: 
> 
> A. Some people claim that *all* resources which one would 
> care to identify can (and should) be dealt with through REST, 
> and therefore rule #2 applies.  And even if you think that a 
> web browser UI and
> request+response interaction makes absolutely no sense to 
> your class of
> resources, these people want you to use http: identifiers 
> *anyway* -- Web browsers are only good at doing http: so you 
> might as well name all things in the world http: "just in 
> case" it turns out that they could be useful in http -- that 
> way there is a slight chance it could one day work in a web browser.

REST is independent of web browsers - it's about an 'automatable web' not
about a 'visual web'. None of the people that have recently been promoting
REST as a way to look at large-scale networked applications have the goal
that those systems might 'one day work in a web browser'. 'These people'
want application designers to consider : 
 - resource modelling as a framework for designing applications 
 - using HTTP as the application protocol
 - ignore and go beyond the oddities and idiosyncracies of 'visual web'
browsers

Received on Wednesday, 17 July 2002 12:45:42 UTC