URI Statements
- Identify MIME Types of URIs.
- Identify versions of URIs.
- URIs should dereference to something, even if it is only documentation,e.g., rdfs:comment.
- Use LSIDs.
- URIs should identify one thing only.
- URI allocation schemes should encourage stability over time.
- Resources identified by URIs should be checksummable.
- Most URIs on the Semantic Web are symbols for things, e.g. a concept or a physical object.
- Things like concepts and objects cannot be 'resolved' through the internet.
- What current proposals about the 'resolution' of URIs do is trying to force four different things into a single URI:
- a. the symbol for a thing,
- b. the symbol for an information resource (i.e. a certain ordering of bytes, for example a JPEG picture or an HTML document) and
- c. a string (i.e. a URI) that can be used in conjunction with some resolution mechanism in order to yield the information resource
- Trying to lump ontologically different things into one symbol is bad practice, and leads to a lot of confusion. This confusion can be avoided by clearly distinguishing a, b and c in our RDF graph.
- Finding additional RDF statements about a given resource has not much to do with 'resolution', would more accurately be described as making a query. These two things should not be mixed up. SPARQL endpoints are probably the best solution by far.
Presentation by AlanRuttenberg at the HCLS 2006 Amsterdam F2F: Representing URI Resolution in OWL