Re: What is the meaning of a taxo: URIs ?

Hi Danny:

Just to pick up on one point:

> According to the Architecture of the World Wide Web [1], it's not a
> good idea to try and extract meaning from URIs, so additional data
> will be required.

AWWW does have this qualification:

"Some URI assignment authorities document and publish their URI assignment policies. For 
more information about URI opacity, see TAG issues metaDataInURI-31 and siteData-36."

Information standard ANSI/NISO Z39.88-2004, 'The OpenURL Framework for Context-
Sensitive Services' (to be published 2005 - early Q1 it's gotta be) defines an open data 
model which among other possible serializations (property list, XML, RDF, OWL) - and see 
the RSS 1.0 module "mod_context" (http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/context/) which we 
have previously published and updated - allows contextual information of a network event 
to be disclosed publicly and openly within a URI querystring - i.e. the URI is not opaque 
and is declared to be not so by a) presenting an identification token 'Z39.88-2004', and b) 
presenting a data structure that is conformant to a standards-based validation exercise 
(i.e. it can be recognized and proven - just like the RDF data model). The point of 
OpenURL is alarmingly simple though it may be unfamiliar to some: 'endpoint negotiation'. 
(OpenURL advocates may not recogize that term but ultimately that is the reduction. I've 
argued before for an 'OpenURL on a PostCard' description - but this may be too terse.
Sorry. ;)

In various contexts sending a proprietrary database key (or filesystem path) down the wire 
just makes no sense. Instead an open description (according to a published data model) of 
the objects (or services) required is communicated so that a link mediator on the _client_ 
side can broker access rights and furnish the user with _appropriate_ endpoints, 
meaningful to them. This is a nice example of the link publisher relinquishing (hitherto 
imagined) control. Increasingly I suspect that we will see more of this kind of user 
empowerment as users buy into the "User see, user do" model.

More than willing to discuss this topic more. It's kind of an important technology to us and 
some of our user communities (i.e. library/publisher relations and also more importantly 
end-user).

Cheers,

Tony

ps/
Top of my head, I don't have the best URI to point you at (this draft standard is about to 
turn into a butterfly real soon now). Anybody who is interested can mail me and I will send 
you something more definitive. For now try

        http://library.caltech.edu/openurl


--- In [email protected], Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@g...> wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 13:31:42 -0000, janegilkristiansen
> <janegil@l...> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > In http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxonomy/,
> > http://dmoz.org/Computers/Data_Formats/Markup_Languages/SGML/ is an
> > example of a taxonomy URI.
> > 
> > To a human, it is obvious that a page about Markup_Languages/SGML/ is
> > also about Markup_Languages/.
> > 
> > But is that obvious to a metadata search engine? Or is additional
> > markup required to define SGML/ as a taxonomic subset of
> > Markup_Languages/SGML/ ?
> 
> According to the Architecture of the World Wide Web [1], it's not a
> good idea to try and extract meaning from URIs, so additional data
> will be required. But the DMOZ scheme *does* define the relationships,
> and those different URIs can reasonably be used to convey the taxonomy
> managed by DMOZ (but the same doesn't apply for arbitrary URIs).
>  
> The structure definitions can be found in one of the big dumps at [2],
> it's /nearly/ RDF/XML, see [3].
> 
> If you're looking at taxonomies then you may want to check out SKOS,
> which features a schema that offers general support for this kind of
> thing, guide is at [4].
> 
> Cheers,
> Danny.
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/#uri-opacity
> [2] http://rdf.dmoz.org/
> [3] http://esw.w3.org/topic/DmozRdf
> [4] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/thes/1.0/guide/
> 
> -- 
> 
> http://dannyayers.com





 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-dev/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    [email protected]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/