- From: Walden Mathews <waldenm@optonline.net>
- Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 18:12:48 -0500
- To: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>, www-tag@w3.org
While the paragraph title says "URI Ambiguity", the text seems to illustrate the notion many would call "indirect identification". The intent is not clear to me. If the point is to say that indirect identification is not a form of ambiguity, then I'd think the paragraph would be better titled "Indirect Identification". It might also be useful, assuming that intent, to point out that indirect identification depends not only on the presence of a URI but also the presence of a context for interpretation. Sans that context, there can be no indirect identification. If, in a context-free setting, a URI seems to denote more than one resource, that's ambiguity, and considered harmful. Something like that. Walden ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Bray" <tbray@textuality.com> To: <www-tag@w3.org> Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 5:45 PM Subject: Draft revised text for 2.2 on ambiguity/indirect identification : : 1. URI Ambiguity : : In Web Architecture, URIs identify resources. They are also useful in : other roles, but this should not normally lead to ambiguity in the : identification function. Consider the following scenario: a : software-development group building a database of information about : companies might choose to use the URI of each company's Web site as a : unique lookup key, since URIs have useful properties of uniqueness, : longevity, and moderate length. In this application, the Web site URI : is being used indirectly to identify the company. The same : software-development group might build a another database of web pages, : very likely indexed by URI. However, this does not mean that the : company has become its Web site, that some Web-page record is actually : a company, that the fields of the two databases would be consistent, or : that the URIs would necessarily be useful as a basis for merging. : : Similarly, people can be identified by their email addresses. When : conference organizers ask attendees to register by giving their email : addresses, both parties know that they are using the mailbox identifier : indirectly to identify the person. The resource identified by the URI : "mailto:nadia@example.com" is still a mailbox, not a person. : : ... continue with Moby-Dick ... : : : Cheers, Tim Bray http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ : : : __________ NOD32 1.557 (20031114) Information __________ : : This message was checked by NOD32 Antivirus System. : http://www.nod32.com : :
Received on Tuesday, 18 November 2003 20:26:31 UTC