Re: REST as formalism of RFC 2396 was ... what the SW needs from the Web...

Jonathan Borden wrote:

> Perhaps I am one of a small minority who believes fairly strongly that REST
> and RDF are compatible. In particular, and at somepoint soon, hopefully, RDF
> will learn to better deal with the need to tie the 'meaning' of a URI to
> some function of the resolution of the URI. At present, RDF can only make
> assertions about URIs [...]

Nitpick: RDF does not make assertions about URIs. It makes 
assertions about Resources denotated by URIs (for some definition of 
Resource). It's this kind of (subtle, I grant you) distinction that 
needs to be kept in mind when talking about RDF, if we're serious 
abiut letting computers do reasoning against RDF graphs. I think we 
have to say we're serious about this - what else do we need RDF for?


>but as TimBL says, the what the URIs themselves mean
> is determined by RFC 2396. If we accept REST as the theory behind RFC 2396
> then we need to integrate the REST meaning of a URI to the RDF assertions
> made about the URI. 

Not so much integration, but layering RDF machinery over REST 
machinery. By the time information gets into an RDF system all 
that's neccessary for that system to function is that each URI is 
resolved to denote one Resource.

> So the question ought not be frame as REST can or cannot
> do x, y, or z, but rather how can RDF make use of a REST determination of
> the meaning of a URI [...]

Layering.


Bill de hÓra

Received on Saturday, 1 February 2003 11:47:32 UTC