RE: The range of the HTTP dereference function

> From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jonathan@openhealth.org]
> 
> Joshua Allen wrote:
> >
> > I think the problem is very simple.  If you declare that
> > http://www.markbaker.ca/ represents the physical you, then you lose
the
> > ability to make assertions about the resource that is returned when
you
> > do a GET on that URI.  If you want to let some URIs do one thing and
> > others another, you need a way for people (and machines) to figure
out
> > what the "default" sense of that URI is.  The other possibility is
to
> > *always* specify (when recording metadata about a URI) what sense
you
> > are using the URI.  This last option seems like the only safe one to
me,
> > since people obviously are insisting on using HTTP URIs to assign
> > metadata about things that are *not* GET-able resources.
> 
> http://www.markbaker.ca/ can easily both identify "Mark Baker", the
person,
> and be GETable.
> 
> The media type image/jpg _representation_ might be a picture of Mark.
> The media type text/html _representation_ might be an HTML page which
Mark
> uses to describe himself.
> 

Absolutely!  You are agreeing that we need a way to clarify in which
"sense" the URI is being used.  If I store a triple that says,
"http://www.markbaker.ca/ looks-like http://www.joethomas.fr/", this is
meaningless unless I specify that whether I mean the "text/html" or the
"image/jpg" associated with that URI.

We need to allow that distinction to be made, and we need to allow it to
be made without requiring the resource or it's representation to be
online at the time it is made (or consumed).

Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 18:20:36 UTC