[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: URIs are simply names was: Re: "Abstract" URIs
John Cowan <jcowan@r...> wrote: > Jonathan Borden, or the avatar of him at jborden@a..., wrote: > > > A URI is simply a name for a thing, whatever that thing may be. > ... > > Anyhow, I too now have a URI: > > http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/self.xtm#self Properly this is a URI reference. Particularly concerning REST and URIs: Roy Fielding's thesis says this: http://www.ebuilt.com/fielding/pubs/dissertation/evaluati on.htm#sec_6_2 [[ REST accomplishes this by defining a resource to be the semantics of what the author intends to identify ... ]] and [[ Defining resource such that a URI identifies a concept rather than a document ... ]] so while you are (I assume) the authority on the type of the resource identified by: http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/ and you are free to assert that it identifies a hypertext document, there is nothing that mandates this. Indeed you are also free to assert that this URI represents _you_ if you so choose. Just as I may assert the semantics of the resource identified by: http://jborden.org ... > > > URIs are names. The point being made is that what they name is NOT the > > literal series of characters returned by a GET, rather the URI names a > > _resource_ which might be anything thing that has a name. What is > > returned by a GET is simply a description of the actual resource > > (other wording is a 'representation of the resource'). > > Again, fair enough. But the use of "description" is an equivoque: the > HTML you can GET from http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/ is a representation > of a certain resource of type "hyperdocument". It is not a > representation of another resource of type "Homo sapiens". It does not > even, as it happens, very well describe that Homo sapiens instance. > Right, but again if you so chose, the GET actually could describe, or return a representation of, "Homo sapiens". The point is that URIs leverage the global naming and registration system to allow people to create URIs and define what these URIs represent. > > URIs are names. > > The point is that names, to be truly useful, should not refer to > distinct referents. It is nothing but a nuisance that "James > Carter" might refer to either a mathematician at UCLA or a former > president of the United States. What URIs bring to naming is an _attempt_ to be unique, yet fundamentally URIs are only unique with respect to a single point in time, and over time their meaning might change. Oh well. The fact is, everything changes over time, even the meaning of strings such as "1 + 1 = 2". Perhaps not optimal, not perfect, but it is the universe we exist in. > > > Jonathan (note new email address -- which refers to the same person as > > jborden@m...) > > Your two email addresses *refer* to distinct mailboxes: it is not all > one (at least eventually, if not immediately) whether I send mail to > jborden@m... or jborden@a.... > > They are *associated*, using any of a variety of properties such > as "mailboxOf", "ownedBy", or "subjectIndicatorOf", with you > yourself, Jonathan Borden. What the URI of Jonathan Borden > might be, we do not yet know. If a topic for you appeared in some topic > map, then we would have a URI for you (an XPointer into the > topic map) and a criterion for determining if other such URIs > also refer to you. > in predicate logic: for all ?person such that mailbox(?person,"mailto:jborden@m...") and mailbox(?person,"mailto:jborden@a...") implies name(?person, "Jonathan Borden") (one can choose from among several syntaxes for representing the same formula) Considering that such logics have been around and well characterized for many decades, I am not sure what topic maps bring to the table. I do think that I need something like a topic map to see how these concepts relate between TM, RDF, FOPL etc. The term "subject" is in grave danger of becoming as overloaded as "resource" Jonathan
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|