Re: requesting XML records

> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 17:17:31 -0500
> From: Ray Denenberg <rden@loc.gov>
> 
> > > Yet another approach is to use the element set
> > > name parameter to indicate the schema.  Actually,
> > > this is pretty much what we agreed upon in
> > > principle at the last ZIG meeting (nearly a year
> > > ago).
> >
> > Was I out of the room?  :-)
> 
> Yes, about 3,000 miles "out of the room". (That'll teach you to miss
> ZIG meetings!)  This was the Dublin (Ohio) meeting at OCLC last
> April.

Ah, c'mon, it wasn't for lack of trying!  Everyone knows it's been a
lifelong dream with me to visit Ohio, "The Buckeye State", named after
a dynamic, harless carnivorous nocturnal rodent that traps its prey by
pretending to offer really good discounts on jewellery (according to
_Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need_, anyway).

> > (If we go this route at all) We _definitely_ mean schema.  Namespace
> > is a complete red herring, and it is misleading even to mention it in
> > this context.
> 
> I suppose I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't asking if we're
> *identifying* a schema or namespace (the answer would be schema) but
> whether we're *pointing to* a schema or namespace (in the sense of
> supplying an actionable url for retrieval), in which case I'm
> suggesting that the answer is neither.

OK, I think I follow you.  I agree emphatically that these URIs --
even when they're URLs -- should be identifiers rather than locations
(although it's always polite to have a nice page on the far end of
such things).

> > I don't see a scaling problem with this at all -- in fact, I'd
> > have thought scalability was one of the _strengths_ of this
> > approach.
> 
> It's the same problem with oids -- you have to have a naming
> authority.  If LC is the authority and we're talking, long term,
> about 100 schemas, no problem. If we're talking about thousands then
> we have to distribute the authority and that causes complication.

Au contraire.  With URIs, you very explicitly do _not_ need a naming
authority.  Once you've got a domain-name, you're welcome to make up
as many schema URIs within it as you wish.  Hence my unilaterally
making up the (broadly analogous) Zthes CQL qualifier-set URI
http://zthes.z3950.org/cql/1.0 without asking permission :-)

-- 

	Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>
	Software Engineer, Index Data UK.

Received on Tuesday, 25 March 2003 17:35:48 UTC