Re: Are *relative* URIs as namespace nemes considered harmful

On reflection, I realized that there is at least one *advantage* to using 
relative URIs when I'm just playing around and am not yet ready to commit 
myself to an established URI - my software can issue a warning telling me 
that my names are not unique. So if I'm creating the One True E-Business 
System, and for the first six months I use a relative URI, then I'll still 
get a warning every time reminding me to change it before I actually deploy 
a system using a relative namespace URI. If I use some arbitrary absolute 
URI, I no longer get the warning, and that's potentially dangerous.

Perhaps that's in the spirit of what the Plenary meant when they said the 
following:

*   The Namespaces Recommendation should be changed
     to warn users that, although relative URIs are syntactically
     legal in namespace declarations and as namespace names,
     they do not in themselves have the characteristics of universality,
     uniqueness, and persistence which are desirable in namespace
     names, because their effective value can change when the base
     URI of their enclosing document changes.

Makes sense to me, at any rate ;->

Jonathan

Received on Monday, 15 May 2000 17:34:00 UTC