[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Re: Why REST was Re: URIs are simply names
On Sat, 2002-02-16 at 20:46, Jonathan Borden wrote: > The core issue is whether we are able to describe anything but "documents" > on the Web. One might take the position that nothing but documents exists on > the Web. But it is the literal incantation of a document which is defined as > the _entity_ (the series of bits) I don't think the incantation of bits is sufficient cause to believe that an abstraction called a resource lurks behind the bits. Nor do I find that abstraction particularly helpful when it interferes (as it regularly does) with expectations about said bits. > As I see it, every document is _about_ something. It is that something which > is the _resource_. So resources are kind of like Hegel's Spirit? Maybe Frank Willison was dangerously right at the end of: http://xml.oreilly.com/news/xmldevcon_0201.html Or is that more like Plato's Forms? I'd really like something more tangible than merely "a resource is the object of an identifier," which is as far as URI folks ever seem to get. Perhaps uselessness is beautiful? > Needless layers of abstraction are just a waste of time. On the other hand > it is essential to distinguish between a description of something and the > thing that is described. For example: XML Namespaces. The RDDL document > isn't the namespace, it describes the namespace. Or your homepage, it may > describe you --if you say so-- but it isn't you --no matter what you say--. I don't claim my homepage is myself. I do, however, claim that http://simonstl.com/articles/index.html has meaning well beyond identification, and the reason that odd string of characters works has infinitely more to do with its role as a locator than as an identifier. The reason RDDL works is that people and machines understand URLs, and can get to the bits. The URI part is, as I said before, hocus-pocus. I'll take incantations of bits over incantations abstractly identifying abstract resources. The other problem, of course, is that isn't clear how these abstractions add up. How do I describe http://simonstl.com/ns/fragments/ when it's both a document and a namespace? I've chosen to take advantage of the URL-nature of the namespace to put a RDDL document there, but that was just me being nice, and now I want to identify the page separately from the namespace in some kind of processing. # doesn't seem to answer this. Identification is a tough problem, and useful in some but not all contexts. I find it hard to believe that anyone but architects wants to see architecture built on identification rather than something slightly more tangible - say, location, even an abstract location in a computer. That's served the Web quite well for a decade. -- Simon St.Laurent Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets Errors, errors, all fall down! http://simonstl.com
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