RE: TAG request: establish the relationship between URIs and Reso urces is many to many

Hi Tim,

Personally I liked the question the way the Bill framed it.

Does attributing 'opinions' to 'users and creators' affect your evaluation
of a truth value for "A thing will be denoted by many URIs."?

Does the maybe arguable presense for "...inconsistency [that] is always
damaging..." affect your evaluation of the truth value of "One URI will be
used to denote many things."?

Regards

Stuart
--

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@textuality.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 3:10 PM
To: Bill de hÓra
Cc: www-tag@w3.org
Subject: Re: TAG request: establish the relationship between URIs and
Resources is many to many



Bill de hÓra wrote:
> 
> To the TAG,
> 
> In an effort to cut to the chase and get some software build and 
> deployed that uses RDF technology, I would like to TAG to advise on the 
> structural relationship between URIs and what it is they identify, 
> namely the Resources (hereafter 'things').
> 
> I offer an opinion. The relationship between URIs and things is many to 
> many. One URI will be used to denote many things. A thing will be 
> denoted by many URIs.

How about a slight recasting of that:

1. Different URIs can identify the same resource, in the opinion of the 
creators and users of that resource.
2. The Web is designed on the principle that a single URI identifies a 
single resource which does not change.  In practice, this principle is 
someties violated (insert list of nasty examples), and software must 
often deal with the consequences, but such inconsistency is always 
damaging and SHOULD be avoided.  -Tim

Received on Thursday, 23 January 2003 10:45:55 UTC