- From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) <clbullar@ingr.com>
- Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:01:02 -0500
- To: "'Norman Walsh'" <Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM>, www-tag@w3.org
Norman writes: >Is there precisely one universal set of semantics? Yes. The empty set. Nothing *is* sacred. That is the root. Not new news. >I don't know if that's a useful point to raise or not, but I am very >deeply concerned that we appear to have at hand an issue that is >intractable. It isn't intractable. Is it useful? The URI is not the representation. It is a syntactically defined string. It is a label if used on the side of a bus; it is an address if used in an http resolver. The bug was to have it be an "identifier" because there is no identity without identification and that is implemented use by use. It is a URN that can be used as a URL. The only people I see who are having problems are not able to define identity in terms of assignment (systemic identity) so they insist on identity being a property of existence and when they do that, they have to include the empty set. So? It hurts nothing but their heads. Software keeps chugging because it doesn't philosophize about 0. >Some folks hold one world view in their heads and argue that the web >works and nothing about their model interferes with their ability to >write software that gets useful work done. >Other folks hold a different world view in their heads and argue that >things are fundamentally ambiguous in ways that are disastrous and >seriously hampers their ability to write software that gets useful >work done. >For the record, I find myself most often in sympathy with the former >group. But I'm using semantic web technologies to get useful work >done, so I must be confused about something. You keep saying it: 'using'. It's in the way that you use it. That is a purely system based definition. There is no confusion. There are different and sometimes overlapping systems using the same labels. They will not reliably provide the same results because they aren't the same use. It is the responsibility of the designer of the code that uses the URI to determine and ensure that it does something useful. The web architecture provides no philosophical quarrel to the solution wherein nothing is a member of everything (0 to 1). That's a notation requirement. The denotating system must decide how many things can exist between 0 and 1. If the semantic web model cannot handle range assignments, it is deeply flawed and in a very silly way but reading Jonathan's responses, I don't think it is. I think the web architecture document authors haven't relaxed and said, "A URI means what you say it means and that is proved by the use you make of it. If your use conflicts with another use, you need to negotiate or sue." This doesn't violate REST. It is at the very heart of REST. because it can never ever provably mean one and only one thing if there are multiple conflicting uses. It can only be assigned and maintained. End of story. Full stop. No more action. Roll credits. We really really should have stuck with PUBLIC and SYSTEM identifiers. I never encountered the nuttiness with those that URIs seem to provoke. len From: Norman Walsh [mailto:Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM]
Received on Friday, 25 July 2003 15:01:11 UTC