Re: How could RDDL be distributed ?

[Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>]

Michael Mealling wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 04:53:06PM +0000, Miles Sabin wrote:
>
> > We have a very specific
> > looming issue (that's my hunch anyway) of large chunks of web
> > infrastructure depending (perhaps unwisely) on being able to
> > retrieve resources on the ends of particular well-known URIs on
> > a regular basis ... a lot of them hosted by the W3C, a lot of
> > them hosted elsewhere. I predict server meltdown.
>
> Yep....
>
>
> > That's my justification for a new protocol. But I think that
> > there's also a very close connection with some of the areas we've
> > been discussing here wrt, RDDL and xmlcatalog. Both allow for
> > local overriding via what is to all intents and purposes a
> > local cache. I suggest we at least look at whether there's
> > enough similarity between the two scenarios to make it worth
> > coming up with a uniform solution.
>
> Yep....
>

Perhaps we can say that xmlcat allows for local overriding of how URIs
supplied as namespace names and via RDDL documents are dereferenced. RDDL
alone makes no mention of exactly how or how ought a URI be dereferenced.
Presumably a RDDL document might contain information useful to a RESCAP or
DDDS http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-urn-uri-res-ddds-02.txt
server. Could you clarify the relationship between these two as you envision
things?

I am slowly reading through what are a large number of articles and RFCs in
this area (as well as the discussion circa 1995-1996 of Uniform Resource
Characteristics). Clearly much of this work involves protocols and clearly
there has been much thought given to these topics.

My thinking regarding RDDL is that RDDL ought stick to being a "language"
for which to describe URIs and not overstep its bounds into the protocol
arena. Yet working with protocols, especially protocols designed to resolve
URIs, is important and this is where RDDL aware software might be useful.

-Jonathan