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

At 10:02 PM 1/22/03 -0500, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>One *can* introduce a new system with a different design
>and argue its merits. Sandro has designed an alternative
>system http://www.w3.org/2002/12/rdf-identifiers/
>which seems consistent and I haven't finished thinking
>about - there are things I like about it and things I don't.
>But it does address all the questions, I think.

FWIW, I think Sandro's proposal is consistent with the current state of RDF 
specification, and other views of URIs that have been expressed here, 
except maybe the view that http: URIs (without fragments) should always 
denote documents (I hope I don't misinterpret).  My point of divergence 
with that proposal is the suggestion it should be part of the RDF core, 
because I don't see the necessity for it to be there.

The formal semantics for RDF does tell us one thing, though:  in a given 
interpretation of an RDF graph (document, or collection of documents 
considered together), a given URI must always denote the same single 
thing.  So we can't have a graph in which a URI sometimes denotes a car and 
elsewhere simultaneously denotes a picture.

#g


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

Received on Thursday, 23 January 2003 06:42:17 UTC