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Topic Map Specifications | Filter | Export | Statistics | Query
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term-subject-address-def |
Type(s):
Issue
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Internal Occurrences (5)
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Description
- At what level of interpretation does the topic represent the
resource? Does it represent that storage location? The stream of
bytes? The stream of bytes interpreted in some particular way? The
standard must either leave the details open or clarify this. Note that
it may be impossible to clarify when the interpretation of locators
is left undefined.
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Opinion
- I dont think we define it. If
for no other reason than we dont have to define what equality is other
than the locator. If i had to take the other extreme position i would
take the one similar to library science that distinguish between the
concept of a work and the individual work. In tm I would adopt a
position that this is a stream of bytes from a location. i.e. it is
the individual work.
- Scope: Graham Moore
- Re "Does it represent that
storage location" the answer must be no. What if the address is
reassigned to different hardware containing a copy of the referenced
resource? What if the address is notational, as in the above example?
What if there are multiple copies of a particular resource (whether
notational or not, as per retrieval from caches rather than the
original resource)? This must be left an open issue for applications
to determine.
- Scope: Martin Bryan
- The way in which a subject
address relates to a subject is in many ways related to the means of
dereferencing the address. For example, a single http: protocol URI
can be dereferenced to many different byte sequences - so the subject
address cannot be considered to represent the content at that
location. Equally, a urn:isbn: reference cannot be dereferenced at all
and could be considered meaningless as a subject address, whereas a
unique object identifier in a content management system may actually
always return precisely the same sequence of bytes and so could be
considered to represent a specific binary object. It might be useful
for the SAM to say something about the stability requirements of a
subject address - e.g. to represent a specific binary object, a
subject address must be given in a notation which cannot be
interpreted in such a way as to retrieve two different byte-sequences
(excepting error conditions such as network or server outages).
- Scope: Kal Ahmed
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Resolution
- No precise definition should
be given. The subject is the information resource, but what that means
is not elaborated on.
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