Re: XRIs *are* intended to be used where URIs are used

* Wachob, Gabe wrote:
>    At [1] and [2], you and Vincent Quint relay the TAG's strong
>recommendation that we implement XRI functionality using http: URIs. I
>assume from the unqualified nature of your responses that members of the
>TAG have read and understood the XRI Requirements [3] and XRI
>Introduction [4] documents and still believe that HTTP URIs meet our
>needs. We have carefully considered a number of ways of supporting the
>functionality and requirements we've been working towards and we don't
>see how HTTP URIs can be used to meet all of our needs. 

Some people consider 'http' URLs to "locate" ("identify" the "location")
of "resources" and some other people consider 'http' URLs to "identify"
"resources".

The latter point of view is that what comes after http://host/ is just
an opaque string controlled by the authority that controls "host", and
as there is no length limit for the string it can be used to refer to an
infinite set of things--which means that, whenever you want to refer to
something, you could use 'http' URLs to do it; which is obviously a good
choice as there is deployed architecture to "dereference" such
identifiers and "dereferencing" is useful if not important.

This model has some unresolved issues though, like, what are the exact
semantics of such identifiers, what should they dereference to, what
are the semantics of the result of the dereference operation, what's
the best syntax to use, which elements of the infinite set of things
that could be referenced should be referenced, "why" things that could
make use of this model don't, etc. The TAG issues namespaceDocument-8,
uriMediaType-9, httpRange-14, metadataInURI-31, rdfURIMeaning-39,
URIGoodPractice-40, schemeProtocols-49, URNsAndRegistries-50, etc.
provide detailed discussion.

The latter group would probably say you should use 'http' URLs unless
there are--their model in mind--compelling reasons not to, while the
former group would probably say you should use 'http' URLs if you want
to refer to documents and services offered by a HTTP web server service.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
68309 Mannheim · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

Received on Friday, 13 May 2005 00:14:59 UTC