Re: Clarifying what a URL identifies (Four Uses of a URL)

David Booth wrote:
>   Quoting from the abstract:
> 
> [[
> URLs can be used to identify abstract concepts or other things that do 
> not exist directly on the Web. This is sensible, but it means that the 
> same URL might be used in conjunction with four different (but related) 
> things: a name, a concept, a Web location or a document instance. 
> Somehow, we need conventions for denoting these four different uses. Two 
> approaches are available: different names or different context. 

I remain unconvinced.  One of the strengths of the Web architecture is 
its uniform naming framework where URIs identify resources and yield 
representations of them, and resources can be anything ranging  web 
pages to schools of philosophy.  The Web Architecture has no built-in 
way to talk about what a Resource "is", and seems to get by just fine. 
RDF is all about talking about what a resource is.  If you need to know 
what kind of thing a resource is, publish some RDF assertions to that 
effect.  What am I missing?

Now, I think that a nice pre-cooked RDF vocabulary of general categories 
of things that resources can be - your note being a first step to that - 
is quite likely worth investing in.  But Web Architecture in the large 
doesn't depend on it at all.  -Tim

Received on Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:59:09 UTC