URIs vs methods for metadata

At 10:28 AM 2/18/03 +0200, Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote:
> > >> My preference would be for an optional response header,
> > "Metadata" or
> > > > some such, returned via GET and HEAD.
> > >
> > > Fair enough, but this is inefficient, as it requires two system
> > > calls to get metadata,
> > > and requires the doubling of URIs on the Web,
> > > one to denote resources and one to denote its metadata.
> >
> > This is a crazy argument!   I assume you were serious.
>
>I'm very serious. And I've not been the only one to make this point.
>
>It seems to me that your proposal makes SW applications second
>class citizens of the web since it takes twice the work to
>get their native content, metadata rather than representations.

Non sequitur.

In a web where human- and machine-readable information have equal status, 
one might equally have some machine readable information (e.g. RDF) 
returned as "native content" with a metadata flag indicating "here be 
human-readable description of this data".  Now who's the second-class citizen?

#g



-------------------
Graham Klyne
<GK@NineByNine.org>

Received on Friday, 21 February 2003 13:06:40 UTC