OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

 


 

   RE: [xml-dev] Generality of HTTP

[ Lists Home | Date Index | Thread Index ]

At 19:38 21/01/2002 +0000, Miles Sabin wrote:
>Jonathan Borden wrote,
> > It seems to me that the benefit of HTTP is that it allows the
> > 'owner' of the URI, which means the registrant of the DNS entry of
> > the hostname, or owner of the IP address, either of which is the
> > "host" part of the URI, to make some statement regarding what the
> > URI is intended _by the owner_ to mean.
>
>Who cares what the owner means. There's nothing to stop anyone else
>using that very same URI to mean something else. That's why URIs can't
>on their own convey meaning. To get that you need semantic agreement
>between the producers and the consumers of the URIs.

Um, this is unduly pessimistic.

You are right, of course: there's absolutely nothing to stop me using the 
<html:p> element to mean "transfer lots of money to my bank account". 
Indeed, if you and I had a private agreement to use it that way, we could 
build a perfectly workable system that way.

But XML is often used in a publishing context, rather than a point-to-point 
messaging context, and explicit private semantic agreements are neither 
possible nor necessary. A tacet agreement to use the meanings defined by 
the owner of a namespace is perfectly workable.


-- 
Cheers,
John





 

News | XML in Industry | Calendar | XML Registry
Marketplace | Resources | MyXML.org | Sponsors | Privacy Statement

Copyright 2001 XML.org. This site is hosted by OASIS