Is a URI a uri or the entity pointed to by the uri?

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

1. Here is a set:

{The Amazon River, George Washington, 3}

That set uses a name for each of its member, but the set consists of the objects named, not of the names themselves. In the set, the first president of the United States, whose name happens to be ‘George Washington’, is a member of the set. But it is the man who belongs to the set, not his name. Exactly the same set could have been described in the following way

{The Amazon River, the first president of the United States, 3}

by using an alternative description for this individual.

2. A vCard file contains this photo property:

PHOTO: http://www.example.com/pub/photos/JohnQPublic.gif

Per the vCard specification, the value of the photo property is what the URI points to, not the URI itself. So, the value of the photo property is the person John Q. Public.

3. An XML document has this attendee element:

                <attendee>http://www.example.com/SallySmith</attendee>

The XML Schema declares attendee this way:

                <element name=”attendee” type=”xs:anyURI” />

What is the value of <attendee>?

Is it:

1. A URI
2. A person named Sally Smith
3. Something else (what?)

/Roger