- From: Michael Mealling <michael@verisignlabs.com>
- Date: 18 Feb 2003 21:30:16 -0500
- To: Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>
- Cc: "Burdett, David" <david.burdett@commerceone.com>, www-ws-arch@w3.org
On Tue, 2003-02-18 at 20:33, Mark Baker wrote: > On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 04:38:54PM -0800, Burdett, David wrote: > > In an earlier email, Francis McCabe said ... > > > > >>>... to use one of Mark's earlier examples, turning on a light switch. The > > state of the light is a representable resource; no question. The action of > > flipping the switch is not so representable. The arm which is used to flip > > the switch is, however, a resource; although any representation of it in > > terms of bits is merely a symbol and not the real thing.<<< > > > > So is the act of moving the arm to turn on/off the switch a resource? > > Well, I suppose you could make it one, but I'm not sure what that > would accomplish. > > One doesn't need to talk about a switch, or the movement of a switch, or > even a toggleSwitch() method, in order to effect a state change with the > bulb, because the interaction style is one of *state transfer*; if I > want to turn the bulb on, I just do a HTTP PUT containing a > representation of the "on state" to the URI identifying the lightbulb. Within the world of HTTP you might do it that way but URIs were meant to be more than any given protocol or scheme. I can think of a myriad of knowledge systems that might want to talk about the physical human act of turning on a light. I'm sure the web3d folks would find that an extremely interesting thing to assign a URI to.... -MM
Received on Tuesday, 18 February 2003 21:34:20 UTC