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I've often heard that HTTP URIs are URLs because they include a string
which is a DNS name. This isn't exactly true. It contains a string
which is the authority, and the *resolution mechanism* maps that to
DNS. If the HTTP URI scheme were designed such that the authority was
just a string like "microsoft", then that would work just as well as
long as the resolution mechanism knew to stick "www." on the front,
and ".com" at the end before looking up the DNS record.
This is no different than "urn:microsoft". DDDS, or any other URI
resolution mechanism, in order to function as a trustworthy
dereferencing system in which Microsoft gets a say in what is returned,
*MUST* somehow turn "microsoft" into some pointer to a piece of
Microsoft-controlled information. This can either be a registry in
which MS has exclusive write access, or an IP address to a Microsoft
machine.
What this means, is that as soon as DDDS is deployed, URNs will become
URLs. That's why I prefer the term "URI", so we can talk about the
identifying properties of UR* independant of other transient properties.
MB
--
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca http://www.idokorro.com
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