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Re: many-to-many

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: many-to-many
• From: Miles Sabin <miles@m...>
• Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 22:13:27 +0000
• Cc: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• In-reply-to: <3E330325.1050201@t...>
• References: <r01050400-1023-B3ACAA1130AA11D78F1A0003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]> <3E330325.1050201@t...>

Tim Bray wrote,
> > I think the main thrust of this thread has that URIs can
> > effectively identify multiple "resources", whatever those are,
> > depending on context. "The resource" as a monolithic being
> > disappears.
>
> I might agree if you drop the word "effectively".  I think the whole
> system, both the everyday Web and the Semantic Web, has a design
> assumption that a URI identifies something.

Maybe, but is that "something" a Resource in the RFC 2396 sense?

As far as network protocols and software are concerned, abstract 
Resources do no work at all. What matters in a retrieval context is 
that there be a functioning server that's capable of returning a 
response, maybe with a response entity, maybe without.

So, if there were no Resources, or more than one, or different ones on 
different occasions, what would break? Can you name one piece of 
working software that'd stop working if Resources were to vanish in a 
puff of existential smoke overnight?

These things are utterly redundant. But worse than that they're just 
getting the way of people (most visibly the RDF crowd) assigning 
meanings to URIs at higher-levels in ways which work for them.

Cheers,


Miles

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: many-to-many
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
  • Re: many-to-many
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Is Resource/Representation a fruitful abstraction? (was Re: many-to-many)
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

• References:
  • Re: many-to-many
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: many-to-many
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

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