Re: Arch Doc: 18 Sep: abstract

On Tuesday, Sep 23, 2003, at 00:19 Europe/London, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

>
>>    http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2003/webarch-20030918/
>
> I know that some folks are annoyed that I keep going back to
> the beginning, but I consider the abstract to be an abstraction
> of the ideas presented in the rest of the document, and if I can't
> agree with the abstraction then it seems unlikely that the details
> will be useful either.
>
> The only way I can rationalize the requirements of the
> hypertext Web with those of the Semantic Web and Web Services,
> without skinning the latter two, is to treat them as three systems
> using a common information space called the Web.

Hear, hear.

Perhaps we should therefore separate out these things a little.
I note that the global hypertext web (which for many users is
what they see of the Web) shares with the semantic web that
is an application of the information space in the sense of a
mapping of URIs to representations.

Web services are different in that as an architecture the in
general don't (the  safe service is treated as special case).

I think the properites of the web as an information space
in the wide sense is so valuable and important to understand that
we should maybe have a separate term for it and/or make the
distinction really clear.


>  As such, we have
> to get our definitions right or the description becomes full of
> contradictions, some of which were pointed out by Pat Hayes.
>
> I also include my definition of "on the Web", which others may
> want to edit, because there doesn't seem to be any point in
> beating around the bush `til we get to the main text.
>

I have tried below.

> ....Roy
>
>
> --- webarch.html        Mon Sep 22 15:55:56 2003
> +++ webarch-roy.html    Mon Sep 22 15:55:26 2003
> @@ -76,17 +76,22 @@
>  <h2 class="notoc"><a name="abstract" id="abstract">Abstract</a></h2>
>
>  <p>
> -The World Wide Web is an information system in which a network of
> -resources are related through hypertext links. Web architecture
> -defines the desired operational behavior of agents within this
> -information system and for protocols that govern interactions between
> -these agents. It is influenced by social requirements and software
> -engineering principles, leading to design choices that constrain the
> -behavior of the Web in order for the system to achieve desired
> -properties: to be an efficient, scalable, shared information space
> -that can continue to grow indefinitely across languages, cultures, and
> -information media. This document is organized to reflect the three
> -dimensions of Web architecture: identification, interaction, and
> -representation.</p>
> +The World Wide Web is a networked information space consisting

of information resources which
have global identifiers. This allows descriptive metadata to describe
resources, and hypertext systems to be built with link between 
resources.

>   Web architecture encompasses both
> +protocols that define the information space by way of
> +identification

the retrieval of representations, and also
"Web Services" protocols which allow arbitrary interactions between 
agents.

> + A resource is considered to be "on the Web" if it can be 
> independently
> + referred to by at least one Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), even 
> if
> +access to that resource is restricted.  Web architecture is
> + influenced by social requirements and software engineering 
> principles,
> + leading to design choices that constrain the behavior of systems
> + using the Web in order to achieve desired properties: to be an
> + efficient, scalable, shared information space that can continue
> + to grow indefinitely across languages, cultures, and information 
> media.
> + This document is organized to reflect the three dimensions of Web
> + architecture: identification, interaction, and representation.</p>
>  </div>

Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2003 07:55:13 UTC