Re: resources and URIs

>On Wed, 2003-07-16 at 23:43, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>>  On Tuesday, Jul 15, 2003, at 19:20 US/Eastern, pat hayes wrote:
>>  > and the universes of discourse may contain entities which
>>  > cannot possibly be all identified or even referred to by URIs, since
>>  > there are too many of them, or it is physically impossible to identify
>>  > them with enough precision, or simply because it is impractical to do
>>  > so.
>>
>>  No one said that there was a URI for every resource.  It is quite a
>>  different thing to say that *any* resource can have a URI (which is
>>  true) as to say that *every* resource has a URI.  The system does not
>>  require that every resource has a URI.
>
>IMHO, this is a dangerous step to take

Well, I think that to deny it would be a dangerous step. although 
foolish might be better. Look, to deny this would be to say that 
things don't exist until they are given a URI... ah, but now I read 
on ....

>and really depends on a
>clarification that probably needs to be made within 2396bis and possibly
>the web architecture document. There is one spot in 2396 that suggests,
>not explicitly, that resources exist before they are 'bound' (my word,
>I've also seen 'minted' used which also seems to work for me) to a URI.
>Many systems outside of the typical W3C membership's experience use URIs
>and have extreme trouble dealing with things that aren't already
>identified by a URI. I suggested this at the 2396bis BOF and it seemed a
>good idea at the time: is it possible to concretely constrain the term
>'resource' as used in 2396 so that a 'resource' only comes into
>existence once a URI is assigned to it (i.e. it becomes part of the
>Web)?

Do you really mean that "comes into existence" ?? You are saying that 
assigning a URI to something *creates* the thing itself, makes it 
real; that it didn't *exist* before the URI was assigned. With 
respect, that is completely insane. And in any case, if it did not 
exist, how can a URI or anything else be assigned to it?

>Then we could create another term for those things that could
>become resources if a URI were assigned?

According to what you said above, this is impossible. There are no 
such things: things only come into existence when a URI is assigned 
to them.

>  I think that language
>clarification would really help....

Well, amen to that.

Pat Hayes


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Received on Saturday, 19 July 2003 14:50:41 UTC