Re: Asynchronous Web Services

David Booth wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> 
> We are accustomed to thinking of a URI (well, a URL actually) as being the
> address of a document.  But in fact, a URI really *is* a key, in the
> database sense.  The difference between a traditional database key and a
> URI is its scope.  A database key is a unique identifier for something that
> lives within the very limited scope of a particular database -- not the
> world as a whole -- and is difficult to use sensibly outside of that
> scope.  A URI is a unique identifier for something that lives within the
> global scope of the World Wide Web.  It is globally unique, which makes it
> easy to use sensibly in new contexts beyond the limited scope of the
> initial application.  This will be particularly important in Web Services,
> as smaller Services are combined in new ways to make larger Services.

I hate to say "I agree" but I agree so emphatically that I can't avoid
it. A URI is a key with global scope and an HTTP URI is a key that can
be introspected to get more information. In the case of conversations:
"Is this conversation still live?" "What happened in that conversation?"
"Who are the participants in this conversation?" RDF allows third
parties to also add their two cents.

-- 
Come discuss XML and REST web services at:
  Open Source Conference: July 22-26, 2002, conferences.oreillynet.com
  Extreme Markup: Aug 4-9, 2002,  www.extrememarkup.com/extreme/

Received on Saturday, 20 July 2002 20:16:39 UTC