xml-dev - Re: Web Resource Identity

[Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>]

David Brownell wrote:
> 
> Yes.  I'll commend you to some archives at the OMG for this topic;
> I recall something like a four year ongoing discussion about the
> notion of identity, which concluded that there are enough different
> notions that picking one to use everywhere was wholly impractical.

I find this hard to believe. Are you saying that in the OMG universe I can
have two references to an object and there is *no way* of asking if they
refer to the same object?

> (So if folk on this list are confused by the notion of "identity",
> it's understandable and you're in fine company.  It's not at all a
> simple notion.)

I'm not so concerned about the folks on this list as the folks who are
writing specs. They write as if the concept of identity were well-defined
in the Web context (see, e.g. RDF and XLink) when clearly it is not.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

[Woody Allen on Hollywood in "Annie Hall"]
Annie: "It's so clean down here."
Woody: "That's because they don't throw their garbage away. They make 
        it into television shows."

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