Dereferencing HTTP URIs (redux?)

I'm not entirely sure of the state of this discussion (for which I  
apologise), but perusing <http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ 
httpRange-14/2007-05-31/HttpRange-14> (which I understand reflects,  
more or less, current consensus) leads me to be somewhat concerned.

I've always been uncomfortable with the 303 solution that the  
Semantic Web world has come up with for the "non-information  
resource" problem. Inferring that two resources are related in a  
fairly fundamental way because of a redirect between them is IMO bad  
for two reasons;

1) Re-defining the semantics of a core element in a protocol that's  
been widely deployed for more than a decade will surprise and  
displease some people.

2) The draft finding makes it a "good practice" to use 303, when in  
fact metadata about the relationships between resources may be  
available in much more efficient fashions. For example, there's  
always site metadata, link headers, etc.

I'm sure this has been raised on www-tag before; I just wanted to  
voice my concerns and then go hide under a rock again :)

--
Mark Nottingham       mnot@yahoo-inc.com

Received on Wednesday, 5 September 2007 01:13:55 UTC