"Sure it's useful as identification but completely useless for
discovery as I wouldn't know how to ask for more info about that URI."
Yep - it's a floor polish, but most definitely is not a dessert topping.
From the Info URI FAQ:
http://info-uri.info/registry/docs/misc/faq.html#value
"
Q. Why are info URIs non-dereferenceable?
A. info is focused exclusively on supporting identity [...]
"
Theoretically distasteful it may be, but in my experience an agreed
on namespace for "identifiers" (independent of any question of
resolution) comes in very handy in practice when trying to make
different systems interoperate and correspond with each other.
To do this, the info guys have had to add an extra layer onto the
existing URI namespace (and chosen this in favour of a URN based
solution) for what seem to me to be very valid practical reasons
(laid out in the FAQ).
Explicitly avoiding the promise/threat of resolution seems like a
pretty good thing to me, if you're aiming to simply define an
identifier.
The XML and RDF worlds seems to be littered with URI-used-as-
identifiers where the URI 'kindof might be resolvable, but it might
not be, so try your luck, and it's also not necessarily defined what
will be delivered if you do resolve it - and also don't all try at
once, or the server it runs on will go down, and your enterprise
application will fail'.
Matt
On 13 Nov 2005, at 23:49, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> MacKenzie Smith wrote:
>> FYI, Tony Hammond at NPG pointed out to me that the info URI proposal
>> has received the blessing of the IETF and is now an Official Standard
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?
>> command=view_id&dTag=10863&rfc_flag=0 NISO will maintain the
>> namespace registry and let's hope they set it up soon!
>> This will be a great help to us once the registry gets going as a
>> way to reference
>> things like PubMed records and published journal articles in a
>> standardized URI
>> kind of a way... we can even urge organizations like the Getty to
>> register their
>> vocabs so that we don't have to invent any more URIs!
>
> Hmmm, one step forward and two step backwards.
>
> This URI scheme is really a URN scheme and it's not able to locate
> anything.
>
> Sure it's useful as identification but completely useless for
> discovery as I wouldn't know how to ask for more info about that URI.
>
> Has the same exact problems that Handles, DOIs, LSIDs and all the
> other domain-specific IDs have: you need yet-another DNS system to
> get to the information, with no particular benefit if not the one
> that yet-another organization is in control of that addressing
> resolution space.
>
> While it's perfectly human that trust is clusterized and never
> global, it is also extremely frustrating, as a developer, to see
> such moves and, more important, to be considered as valuable for
> the ecosystem while they just introduce more work for no value
> other than more abstraction from the real problems.
>
> http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29466
>
> is as unique as
>
> urn:handle:1721.1/29466
>
> or now
>
> info:handle/1721.1/29466
>
> but with the first I know what to do to get more info out of it
> (and using HTTP content negotiation, I can ask for an HTML page or
> an RDF page) with the other two, I need to ask yet another DNS
> (which is currently unspecified!!) to give me a URL to locate that
> URI.
>
> Why? What is the benefit? that I can use another protocol rather
> than HTTP to get out information? why would I ever want that? HTTP
> is perfect for these kind of things! the simplest thing that can
> possibly work.
>
> If you want to talk about stuff, any identifier is equivalent.
>
> But if you want to build a semantic web, you need to be able to
> locate stuff or it's going to be utterly useless as a global
> coordination effort.
>
> I will sound like TimBL here but I really don't believe these non-
> dereferenceable URI schemes are really helping out.
>
> They sure remove the pressure from the domain name that is tasked
> to do the rereferencing, but this pressure is not gone, is just
> displaced... and hidden under a carpet of unspecified registry lookup.
>
> So, if I have to take
>
> info:handle/1721.1/29466
>
> transform it into
>
> http://info-uri.info/handle/1721.1/29446
>
> which redirects to
>
> http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29466
>
> which redirects to
>
> https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/29466
>
> why is this better than starting out with
>
> http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29466
>
> directly?
>
> The usual answer in computer science is: if you don't know how to
> solve a problem, just add another level of indirection.
>
> That's how this "info" URN scheme feels to me.
>
> --
> Stefano Mazzocchi
> Research Scientist Digital Libraries Research Group
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology location: E25-131C
> 77 Massachusetts Ave telephone: +1 (617) 253-1096
> Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 email: stefanom at mit . edu
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
Received on Mon Nov 14 2005 - 00:32:58 EST