Re: Banging the identity drum again, this time REST-style

Hi Andrew,

[...]
> All I was actually was presenting in the original mail was a
> potential opportunity to remind people:

> a) There's this thing called Topic Maps, and we think it's pretty cool for these reasons, and

> b) we think this is how it might possibly be useful in making your
> life easier as the designers, architects and implementers of
> loosely-coupled information systems.

Let's focus on these points.

If I've

   <link rel="http://psi.example.org/father-of"
         uri="http://www.example.org/sean"/>

Why should I create a mapping to Topic Maps if I can translate it
directly into RDF's triples? Okay, we don't want a mapping, so we can
simply enhance the link with attributes to make it mappish:

   <link rel="http://psi.example.org/father-of"
         uri="http://www.example.org/sean"
         this="http://psi.example.org/father"
         other="http://psi.example.org/child"/>

Now we can create a binary association from the link specification:

    %prefix ex <http://psi.example.org/>

    ex:father-of(ex:father: <context-iri-here>,
                 ex:child: <http://www.example.org/sean>)

That's all nice and good. But who would annotate the links with
further attributes and why? I can directly translate the 1st link into
a subject pred object triple.

Practically, I'll find more links in the wild which are as simple as
the first link, so I need a mapping which creates the missing role
types.

[...]
> I'm sure you've had this feeling with the work you've mentioned
> doing on dbpedia dumps, but why should we have to do this.  Why are
> we, a very small community, trying to absorb the work of helping
> everyone else make sense of this information landfill we see and
> experience every day through the window of Google's search box?  Why
> can't we distribute this effort--just like the Web?

If you want to be the Topic Maps poster boy, go ahead. ;)

I just wondered why people should extend the links if the links work
for important technologies like RDF/LOD. I simply doubt that they
change it just because a few people on this planet like to see it more
Topic Mappish.

[...]
>> Well, now I am far away of your "Link" header proposal and I should
>> read your response to Patrick. :)

> Link header?  I never mentioned a link header that I recall (at
> least not in the emails, I've no real idea everything I said in the
> linked emails.  That was a long time ago) :)

No, sorry, I mixed up your initial mail with "my" RFC 5988.


[...]
> Now... go read the other emails! :)

:)

Best regards,
Lars
-- 
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