RE: resources and URIs

The utility of the name depends on the facility of 
node on the network to dereference it.  A URI is a name 
until it is actively dereferenced.  A network that includes all 
things that can be named in the universe but does not 
provide a means to choose among all equally probable 
candidates is fully entropic (worthless).  To reduce 
the entropy, one has to bound the definition to include 
only system components that can reliably respond to 
some acceptable degree of certainty.

A person observing the bus can reasonably expect to 
copy the name on the bus into their web-capable and 
receive a response of some kind.  As a member of the 
universe that can contain a URI, if we claim the bus 
is on the web, we have said the web, as a system, is 
randomly reliable.   If resource must be identified by 
a URI, and a resource returns representations, then:

1.  Neither the bus nor the galaxy are on the web. 
    They cannot return a representation.  The URI 
    on them is just a syntactically valid name given 
    it can be tested and proven so.

2.  Because they aren't, the hash mark changes nothing. 

3.  The range of the hashed information is delimited 
    by the resource.  If the resource cannot return 
    a representation, that range is the empty set.

4.  The return of a representation is testable.  Until 
    that test returns a value, the set is empty. 

Provable existence 'on the web' is a transient condition of 
resources AND representations. That the range of a hashed 
identity is transient follows for any resource or 
representation.  

The resource must determine the range for any URI 
that it handles and return a representation if it 
has one.

In the web-as-a-network architecture, is there any 
request operation for which the system does not return an 
ack?

len

From: Norman Walsh [mailto:Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM]

| / "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com> was heard to say:
| | Nicely vague but operationally meaningless and that is 
| | what a lot of people are having problems with.  Saying 
| | a resource is the side of the bus that the URI is printed 
| | on plus anything else printed there, or that a Ford Galaxy 
| | or a Ford Falcon are resources 'on the web' makes the 
| | web equal to the knowable universe.
| |
| | That buys us exactly nothing at the cost of Boltzman entropy.

All you seem to be saying is that if I put a #-mark in all those URIs
on the sides of busses, everything would be ok.

Is that so?

Received on Monday, 28 July 2003 17:46:13 UTC