- From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) <clbullar@ingr.com>
- Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:39:05 -0600
- To: "'Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com'" <Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com>, www-tag@w3.org
Ok, I think I understand. Still, if they are different resources, one being a descriptive document about the other, you seem to be saying that you want to be able to get different resources with the same name; or really, use one name but depending on the method, get different resources. You do this by using a different method so the selector discriminates not by what is asked for but by how. It is as if you went to the library and asked for a book, but depending on how you asked, the librarian brings you a book or the card catalog entry. I can see that working well. I'm not convinced it is necessary but I leave that to those more familiar with the issues of fielding new verbs. Thanks for the explanation! len From: Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com [mailto:Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com] > From: ext Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@ingr.com] > Why are representations of documents > about other documents not just documents? They are. But they need not be named documents. And in most cases, when speaking of the body of knowledge known by a server about a resource, they will not be named. > What is the advantage of separate but equal resources? There are no separate but equal resources. If you want to name the resource corresponding to the body of knowledge known about another resource, go ahead. But why do so if you don't ever need to? The part that is distinct is the behavior of the HTTP server. If I ask for a description of a resource, it is not returning a representation of that resource, but rather a representation of *another* resource, which is the body of knowledge known about the resource denoted by the URI in the request to the server. It is this distinction between interacting with respresentations, per the Web, versus interacting with descriptions, per the Semantic Web which must be kept distinct. And the semantics of HTTP methods at present deal only with interacting with representations, and trying to overload them to also support interacting with descriptions does not seem to be possible, and even if possible, not optimal and certainly not straightforward. What is needed, IMO, are new methods specialized for interacting with descriptions. Hence my proposal for MGET, MPUT, MDELETE, etc.
Received on Wednesday, 12 February 2003 10:40:15 UTC