RE: [xml-dev] Is Resource/Representation a fruitful abstraction? (was Re: [xml-dev] many-to-many)

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

The problem is one of the RFC itself.  It the definition 
of the URI as used in RDF and in The Traditional Web 
both refer to the same RFC and that RFC uses a model 
with a semantic of resource/representation, then there 
is a conflict.  If the RFC is rewritten to discard 
that and provide only the properties of syntax  
and uniqueness, then all parties can return to their 
own corners and do the right thing in their own 
universe.  The identifier only needs to be uniform, 
not universal (across models). 

Otherwise, the way to proceed is 
to teach implementors to ignore that part of the 
RFC which is not applicable to the task at hand.

"Dare to do less" means "operate in your own universe".

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@xegesis.org]

"URLs are useful as a way of generating unique 
identifers" is a nice trick even without all the stuff (that some of us 
seem to consider voodoo) about abstract resources and representations 
thereof.  It seems to me that it's the *uniqueness* of URIs that leads to 
most of their power, both as locators and identifiers, and I'm not at all 
convinced that the uniqueness property depends on the resources/respresentation 
abstraction.

Clearly there are some very powerful ideas underlying the success of the 
Web, and URLs/URIs are clearly one of the key principles.  I simply think 
there's a lot of room for alternative theories of exactly why that is.  The 
resource/representation paradigm is clearly one of them and must be taken 
seriously, but not IMHO treated as axiomatic.  I'm sure we would best serve 
humanity by agreeing to disagree on this rather than abuse yet another 
mailing list with the debate :-)