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RE: Best Practice for URI construction?

• To: "'Peter Hunsberger'" <peter.hunsberger@g...>
• Subject: RE: Best Practice for URI construction?
• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 21:21:46 -0000
• Cc: "'Costello, Roger L.'" <costello@m...>,"'XML Developers List'" <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <cc159a4a0512121236jdb2093fj28d11938c4c8237f@m...>
• Thread-index: AcX/W8HkE/i5rRvuQdOlRTlVlyrcGAAAUIDQ

> 
> I was giving examples of possible results, for any given
> implementation it's should never be ambiguous.  Eg; without the query
> parameters it identifies the search screen (perhaps). With the query
> parameters it identifies a single patient (assuming one exists for the
> given parameters). An alternate implementation might be that without
> query parameters the results is a list.
> 
> Or where you worried about something else?

Yes, I'm worried that we're trying to solve the meaning of life the universe
and everything when we clearly lack the intellectual apparatus even to
define the problem.

You're right that if we stick to "implementations" the problems are
tractable. I wouldn't say "implementations", I would say "closed systems".
When we do information modelling we ask questions like "what is a flight?",
"if a flight involves a stopover, is that one flight, two flights, or
three?", "if an extra plane is laid on to handle extra demand, is that the
same flight or a different flight?". I know how to tackle these questions
within the confines of a closed system where we can agree the terms and what
we mean by them. A smallish group of people can get together and decide on
precise definitions of the terms they are using within a limited domain of
discourse. 

I simply don't believe that it can be done universally, and what worries me
is that there seem to be people who think it can. What I mean by "flight"
depends on the conversation I am having at the time, and calling it
http://www.saxonica.com/vocabulary/flight instead isn't going to change
that. OK, we could define 120 different URIs to cover the different precise
meanings of the word, but that would only reduce our ability to communicate
with each other. There's a good reason why language is fuzzy and full of
nuance: if it were possible to develop a precise and unambiguous and
unchanging vocabulary we would have evolved one years ago. Deciding that
every distinct concept is going to have a distinct URI is just simplistic:
like tons of bricks or piles of sand, concepts are amorphous and lack clear
identity. Should we talk patents?

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

• References:
  • Re: Best Practice for URI construction?
    • From: Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>

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