RE: URI for abstract concepts (domain, host, origin, site, etc.)

My definition of host comes from RFC 2616.

What I am looking for is a way to express a web concept for the purpose of describing its attributes as a URI. It needs to be a URI because the frameworks we use to describe things on the web are all limited to describing resources identified with URI.

The only option I would like to rule out is to use a reserved HTTP URI for this purpose. I am open to pretty much all other options, if they correctly convey the idea of "host", "domain", etc.

EHL

> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Martin J. Dürst" [mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp]
> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 11:46 PM
> To: Eran Hammer-Lahav
> Cc: Dan Connolly; apps-discuss@ietf.org; www-tag@w3.org; URI
> Subject: Re: URI for abstract concepts (domain, host, origin, site,
> etc.)
> 
> On 2009/06/26 12:18, Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote:
> 
> > In my case, the "resource" is the concept of a host, which is the
> combination of a domain name, port number, and protocol used on that
> port. I want to be able to describe this host by saying, "this is how
> you transform any HTTP URI that belongs to this host to the URI of its
> metadata". There are plenty of ways to express this statement but so
> far I don't have a good way to express the subject of this statement -
> the host.
> >
> > Of course, I can come up with something like this:
> >
> > http://abstract.example.net/host/example.com:80:http
> >
> > And simply include in the protocol that the
> http://abstract.example.net/host/ prefix is a special case exception.
> But while such solutions (a URI version of a well-known location) might
> be acceptable for HTTP servers due to the complexity and cost of
> deploying changes to the infrastructure (such as a new HTTP method),
> they are less acceptable for URIs which can be easily extended with
> nothing more than a couple pages of spec...
> >
> > It is almost as easy to register a new URI scheme or URN namespace as
> it is for me to buy and maintain a new domain name. But I think in this
> case, the reserved domain name is a lot more offensive to web
> architecture than a new URI scheme or some other URI-based solution.
> >
> > I am also happy to make this as specific as needed for my super
> special use case and mint a new host: URI scheme.
> 
> This seems to indicate that 'host' is just one kind or type of thing.
> There are tons and tons of other such things. Apples, oranges,
> blueberries, just to start with. The idea that we need a new URI scheme
> for every kind of data or thing that we want to talk about seems highly
> unscalable. Also, your concept of 'host' may be slightly different from
> what somebody else would think a 'host' is or has to be. Again,
> defining
> a 'host:' URI scheme very much looks like a non-starter. I don't
> exactly
> understand what you think your problem is, but I think it's a mistake
> to
> assume that because you have something that you can denote with almost
> the same information as available in an HTTP URI (that wouldn't be true
> for apples and oranges), it should have a scheme.
> 
> Regards,   Martin.
> 
> --
> #-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
> #-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Friday, 26 June 2009 15:33:01 UTC