httpRange-14 followup: Using http://thing-described-by.org?... for non-information resources

FYI.  The suggestion below is followup to the TAG's httpRange-14
resolution.  Discussion (if any) should probably go to the
public-swbp-wg@w3.org list, since this is no longer a TAG issue.

-----Original Message-----
From: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Booth, David (HP
Software - Boston)
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 2:24 PM
To: public-swbp-wg@w3.org
Subject: RE: Using URIs to identify non-information resources

Correcting a couple of typos . . .

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Booth, 
> David (HP Software - Boston)
> Subject: Using URIs to identify non-information resources
> 
> How about using an http site such as thing-described-by.org
> to do 303 redirects?
> 
> If I have a URI for a Web page that describes myself, such as
> 	http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/
> then
> 	http://thing-defined-by.org?http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/

Oops! The above URI should have been:
	http://thing-described-by.org?http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/

> could be a URI that identifies me, and the
> thing-defined-by.org server would do a 303-redirect to 
> http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/ .

Same typo again. :(  The sentence above should have said "the
thing-described-by.org server would do a 303-redirect . . .".

> 
> It seems to me this would have several advantages:
> 	- The URI for me always has the same meaning, regardless of the 
> 	  MIME type returned by http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/ .
> 	- I would not have to set up my server to return a 303, because
> 	  the thing-described-by.org site would do it for mt.
> 	- I would not have to pre-register
> http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/ with
> 	  the thing-described-by.org site.
> 	- Since thing-described-by.org would *always* return 
> 303 redirects, there
> 	  would be no need for software to do an HTTP access to 
> it. Software
> 	  could skip the extra HTTP request to 
> thing-described-by.org and
> 	  access http://dbooth.org/2005/dbooth/ directly.
> 
> This idea is similar in concept to the "*" operator proposed
> by Sandro Hawke and Eric P, or the tdb: URI scheme proposed 
> by Larry Masinter, but does not require any change to RDF nor 
> a new URI scheme.
> 
> What do others think of this idea?
> 
> BACKGROUND
> The TAG's 303 redirect solution for permitting http URIs to
> identify non-information resources seems inadequate to me because:
> 
> 	- Authors don't always have control over their Web
> servers, to be 
> 	  able to return 303.
> 	- It makes the *absence* of a document be significant, 
> which seems 
> 	  counter-intuitive and error prone.
> 	- Creating and maintaining an additional URI just to 
> return a 303 
> 	  seems unnecessarily troublesome.
> 	- The relationship between the concept URI and the 
> defining document URI
> 	  can only be determined by a successful HTTP access, 
> and a 303 result
> 	  is not even cacheable, thus placing a 
> 
> And of course, the use of hash URIs
> (http://example.org/ont#DansCar) to identify non-information 
> sources also seems inadequate to me because its meaning is 
> dependent on the returned MIME type.
> 
> David Booth, Ph.D.
> HP Software
> dbooth@hp.com
> Phone: +1 617 629 8881
>  
> 
>

Received on Monday, 11 July 2005 20:05:54 UTC