[topicmapmail] Meaning of URIs - ongoing debate on new W3C forum

[Jan Algermissen]

"Thomas B. Passin" wrote:
> 
> Jan Algermissen wrote:
> >
> > Thomas, please answer this:
> >
> > a) in RDF, what does "http://www.w3.org/index.html" denote?
> >
> >
> >
> > b) in TM-land, what does "http://www.w3.org/index.html" denote?
> >
> 
> I have no idea.  

Well, 'denote' was the wrong word to use. I meant 'identify'.

So in a) the URI per definition allways identfies the Web-Resource
(whatever that resource is intended to be in this case) and in
b) we cannot be sure if the resource either identifies the WebResource or
a subject that is indicated by this Web-resource. We'd need the addressing
context to answer this.

What I wanted to stress is that addressing in RDF and Topic Maps is really
different and not compatible.

Furthermore, Topic Maps implicitly make the assumption that a URI identifies
a resource that 'is' a document. TMs completely ignore the possibility that
http://www.w3.org/index.html might actually identify 'the W3C'. A TM author
could really make the W3C an occurrence of some topic in that case.

Jan


There is not enough information in either a) or b).  b)
> could be the ResourceRef value of a "homepage" occurrence, or it could
> be a PSI value of a subject indicator, or who knows?  And similarly for
> rdf.
> 
> Now if we knew that it was used in <something_or_other
> rdf:about='http://www.w3.org/index.html'>...., we would know that there
> was a resource of type "something_or_other" that could be referred to by
> a string equal to that uri and we could speculate or hope that, if
> de-referenced, there might be found something useful about that resource.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Tom P
> 
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-- 
Jan Algermissen                           http://www.topicmapping.com
Consultant & Programmer	                  http://www.gooseworks.org