RE: HTTP Methods. MGET.

-----Original Message-----
From:	www-tag-request@w3.org on behalf of ext Jon Hanna
Sent:	Fri 2004-02-27 12:54
To:	Dare Obasanjo
Cc:	Norman Walsh; www-tag@w3.org
Subject:	RE: HTTP Methods. MGET.



Quoting Dare Obasanjo:

> Quoting NormanWalsh:
> > If you need MGET to get metadata for the data that GET would 
> > give you, how do you get the metadata about the data that 
> > MGET gives you? 

MMGET?

So far the only case where I agree that the metadata shouldn't be a
represention and obtained by looking for an appropriate content-type is the
case where:
1. The resource is in itself metadata about another resource(s).
2. This metadata cannot contain information about itself (for externally
enforced reasons).
3. We care about the metametadata of the metadata (but presumably not about the
metametametadata as that hits the problem of how to MGET an MGET's results).

     There is *no* problem with MGETting a description of a description. 

     A description is a resource in its own right and a response to an MGET
     request should specify in the header the URI of the description. That distinct
     URI can then be used in another MGET request to get the description of the
     description, etc. etc. for as many levels of recursion you like.


> A similar question is how does one make RDF assertions about such
> metadata? Does one use the URI of the resource or one for the resource's
> metadata? 

I threw together a few thoughts about how to make assertions about
representations separately to resources, which could apply here if we accept
metadata as just another representation, at
<http://www.hackcraft.net/rep/rep.xml> (or
<http://www.hackcraft.net/rep/rep.html> if your browser doesn't do xslt
transforms). Needless to say the very idea buys into a particular ideological
position regarding what URIs identify.
I keep meaning to look at it again, but my expertise at this kind of modelling
is modest to say the least and generally I'm just happy that Patrick bothers to
try to convince an enthusiastic amateur* like me about MGET (though now he's
trying to convince ye as well), so I'm a bit nervous of going any further
without feedback on it (and I'm just as happy for someone to shoot it all down
as to praise it; if I had a thin skin I wouldn't have done anything at all).

             Since descriptions are resources with distinct URIs, you can say
             whatever you like about them. Likewise, descriptions (as with any
             resource) can have multiple representations, and one can select
             from among those representations via conneg.

*Of course if you can't convince enthusiastic amateurs you'll have a problem
convincing unenthusiastic amateurs. I think convincing unenthusiastic amateurs
is a good definition of "marketing". :)

            ;-)

            Patrick

-- 
Jon Hanna
<http://www.hackcraft.net/>
"…it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for
equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people." - jargon.txt

Received on Saturday, 28 February 2004 14:19:40 UTC