RE: Proposed issue: site metadata hook

MGET solves this problem (and many others).

A web site is just another resource. Let's agree that the
<scheme>://<authority> portion of a URI denotes a web site
(I don't think that will all that controversial).

So <http://example.org> denotes a web site. 

And, 'MGET http://example.org' will return an RDF/XML instance providing
the description of that site.

There is no need to require a metadata file with separate identity nor
two calls to the server to get the required information (first a GET
or HEAD to get the metadata file URI and then a GET to get the file).

A single call of MGET does the job. 

And MGET also solves numerous other problems, such as those addressed
by RDDL as well as general access to resource metadata via their URIs.

And MGET allows all the confusion about XML Namespaces to simply
be tossed aside, since MGET deals with full URIs and one can then
inspect the knowledge defined about each individual term irregardless
of whatever namespace was used as punctuation in some XML serialization.

A URI denotes a resource. 
Use GET to get a representation of the resource. 
Use MGET to get knowledge about the resource.

Browsing the semantic web then is analogous to browsing the web,
but using MGET rather than GET. Like two sides of the same coin,
and HTTP is the coin.

Simple.

I'm working on having a demonstration of MGET and friends by the 
technical plenary...

Cheers,

Patrick
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Tim Berners-Lee [mailto:timbl@w3.org]
> Sent: 10 February, 2003 18:02
> To: www-tag@w3.org
> Cc: tag@w3.org
> Subject: Proposed issue: site metadata hook
> 
> 
> 
> In the face-face meeting I took an action to write up a proposal for
> the following potential issue:
> 
> 
> Proposed Short name:  SiteMetadata-nn
> 
> Title:   Web site metadata improving on robots.txt, w3c/p3p 
> and favicon 
> etc
> 
> The architecture of the web is that the space of identifiers
> on an http web site is owned by the owner of the domain name.
> The owner, "publisher",  is free to allocate identifiers
> and define how they are served.
> 
> Any variation from this breaks the web.  The problem
> is that there are some conventions for the identifies on websites,
> that
> 
>     /robots.txt  is a file controlling robot access
>     /w3c/p3p is where you put a privacy policy
>     /favico   is an icon representative of the web site
> 
> and who knows what others.  There is of course no
> list available of the assumptions different groups and manufacturers
> have used.
> 
> These break the rule.  If you put a file which happens to be
> called robots.txt  but has something else in, then weird 
> things happen.
> One might think that this is unlikely, now, but the situation could
> get a lot worse.  It is disturbing that a
> precedent has been set and the number of these may increase.
> 
> There are other problems as well - as well sites are catalogued
> by a number of different agents, there tend to be all kinds
> or request for things like the above, while one would like to
> be able to pick such things up as quickly as possible.
> 
> If, when these features were designed, there had been a
> general way of attaching metadata to a web site, it would
> not have been necessary.
> 
> The TAG should address this issue and find a solution,
> or put in place steps for a solution to be found,
> which allows the metadata about a site, including that for
> later applications, to be found with the minimum overhead
> and no use of reserved URIs within the server space.
> 
> Example solution for feasability
> 
> A new http tag such as "Metadata:" is introduced into HTTP
> This takes one parameter, which is the URI of the
> metadata document.  The header is supplied on response to
> any GET or HEAD of the root document  ("/"). It may also
> be supplied on a any other request, including error
> requests.
> 
> The Metadata document is conventionally written in RDF/XML.
> It contains pointers to all kinds of standard and/or proprietary
> metadata about the site, including for example
> 
> - privacy policy
> - robot control
> - icon for representing the site
> - site maps
> - syndicates (RSS ) feeds
> - IPR information
> - site policy
> - site owners
> 
> The solution only needs to document the hook and the
> vocabulary to point to metadata resources in current
> use.  Vocabulary for new applications can be defined
> by those applications.
> 
> timbl
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 11 February 2003 06:29:45 UTC