Re: Subgroup to handle semantics of HTTP etc?

------- Original message -------
From: Xiaoshu Wang <wangxiao@musc.edu>
> 
> I think that semantics should be drawn only from what is asserted in an 
> RDF content, but we should not draw from how the RDF is obtained.  To 
> draw conclusion from a network protocol, such as HTTP, essentially bound 
> URI to its network protocol, which is a very bad idea.

To me, this amounts to a decoupling of RDF from web architecture, which is, if I understand thing correctly, exactly opposite to the purpose of RDF.

What the server at www.microsoft.org:80 has to say about the URI http://www.microsoft.org/hfy125 is authoritative, according to web architecture, which is not 
true for *any* other protocol. Therefore any conclusions that can be drawn from that interaction are really interesting.

> 
> URI is just a symbol that denotes a thing in the world.

I truly hope that this is not true, not even for RDF.

  What a URI 
> denotes (or what it mean) is independent of how you get the 
> information.  For instance, we can develop a human protocol by flashing 
> a URI card to a person, the person can respond by saying what s/he knows 
> or don't know or relay the question to someone else. HTTP, in essence, 
> is just such a request/respond *protocol*.

Except http URIs are grounded in a sequence of specifications that makes it possible to differentiate between the owner of microsoft.com and everyone else.

   The form of URI  is just 
> such a design of that, given a URI, who we should ask the question about 
> the URI first without any other knowledge about the URI. 

Not only ask first, but the final authority about the URI.

> 
> I do think that AWWW needs to clarify, but not to say what you can infer 
> but in an opposite way.  I.e., to discourage any "inference" from how a 
> protocol responds to a request.

I most strongly disagree. I even think that this would contradict the http spec and others, that do support drawing the conclusion that a returned 
representation represents the denoted resource, etc.

I do think our disagreement does show the need for a TAG statement about the entailments of a http interaction.us

/Mikael

> 
> Xiaoshu Wang
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 

Received on Tuesday, 16 October 2007 15:05:50 UTC