[Mulgara-dev] descriptors/references

[David Wood]

Hi all,

To be clear, I am suggesting that *neither* the RDF nor Mulgara  
namespaces should return a document.  Instead, both namespaces should  
return an HTTP 303 status code that may optionally point to documents  
describing the resources.

Regards,
Dave


On 16 Jul2007, at 10:02, David Wood wrote:

> Hi Bill,
>
> On 7 Jul2007, at 01:05, William Mills wrote:
>> So the major difference between rdf and mulgara that I have found  
>> so far is
>>
>> That http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns is actually  
>> available as an XML reference document, and http://mulgara.org/ 
>> mulgara is not.  Should this be true?
>
> It depends and is under active discussion, especially within the  
> W3C Technical Architecture Group.  At issue is whether HTTP URIs  
> may refer to things that are not information resources (such as  
> physical resources or namespaces) and whether the term "information  
> resource" includes virtual concepts like namespaces at all.  This  
> discussion is complicated by the fact that "information resources"  
> are currently defined as things you get back from a URI  
> dereferencing when the server responds with a 2XX HTTP response  
> code (!).  It is all very circular.
>
> The current state of thinking is that HTTP should return different  
> status codes depending on what you are trying to do.  This should  
> eventually result in a clean handling of both information and non- 
> information resources by HTTP (and hopefully encourage everyone,  
> including Mulgara) to ground their namespaces in URIs.
>
> In brief, an HTTP 2XX return code should result when the  
> transaction returns an information resource.  Non-information  
> resources should result in an HTTP 303 (See Other) response, which  
> may optionally list one or more URIs that relate to the non- 
> informational resource (but are not in fact the resource itself).
>
> Brian Sletten of the Mulgara community and I are actively upgrading  
> the Persistent URL or PURL service at http://purl.org to handle the  
> full range of HTTP return codes for this purpose.  It is our hope  
> that Mulgara will follow others in using PURLs for namespace  
> dereferencing.
>
> Here is the current W3C guidance, but note the large number of  
> disagreements in the draft document:
>
> Dereferencing HTTP URIs
> Draft TAG Finding 31 May 2007
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/httpRange-14/2007-05-31/HttpRange-14
>
> and the older open TAG issue that started this discussion:
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/issues.html#httpRange-14
>
> Regards,
> Dave
>
>
>