Resource Identity and Semantic Extensions: Making Sense of Ambiguity David Booth’s paper was cited by Bernard Vatant so I had to go take a look.
Bernard says: “The best analysis of the issue I’ve read so far.” I have to agree.
From the paper’s conclusion:
In general, a URI’s resource identity will necessarily be ambiguous. But this is not the end of the world. Rather, it means that while it may be unambiguous enough for one application, another application may require finer distinctions and thus consider it ambiguous. However, this ambiguity of resource identity can be precisely constrained by the use of URI declarations. Finally, a standard process is proposed for determining a URI’s resource identity.
Ambiguity is part and parcel of any system and the real question is how much can you tolerate?
For some systems that is quite a bit, for others, air traffic controllers come to mind, as little as possible.
Other identifiers are ambiguous as well.
Successful integration of data across systems depends on how well we deal with that ambiguity.
[…] reading Resource Identity and Semantic Extensions: Making Sense of Ambiguity and In Defense of Ambiguity it occurred to me that reducing ambiguity has a hidden […]
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