[gcs-pcs-list] big day in #code4lib

[Xiaoming Liu]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Mike Rylander wrote:

> On 3/6/06, Daniel Chudnov <daniel.chudnov at yale.edu> wrote:
>> Y'all are going to have to gang up something fierce to convince me
>> that the unAPI spec itself should say *anything* about the meaning of
>> URIs or the meaning of patterns of URIs and specific unAPI servers.
>>
>
> I want to say that the URIs /don't mean anything/.  Any resource you
> fetch using an URI you get from me may have no relation whatsoever to
> any other site's resource identified by an identical URI (where
> identical is defined by strcmp (3)).
>
>> unAPI services and clients should not be forced into a mode of
>> operating on objects anywhere that is mandated to be at any specific
>> node/level in the FRBR work-expression-manifestation-item model.  Or
>> that any fetched object with any kind of URI from any unAPI server
>> should be expected to remain identical over time or space.  Or that
>> the only "correct" dissemination for some URI and FORMAT is from some
>> specific server.
>>
>
> Sure.  The spec doesn't say that, and it, apparently, caused some
> confusion.  It is my belief that the confusion arose due to the mixing
> of implementation concepts (how a "real" OpenURL server works) versus
> the actual purpose of the unAPI spec.
>

I indeed think many confusions arose due to the mixing of implmentation 
vs. spec.

unAPI spec only describes a protocol. How to use it is out of the scope of 
spec definition. Let's take the example of Web, in one case, say if you 
run a google of all unAPI resources, you may only care about current 
snapshot and deliver a search service; in another case, say if I am 
building an Internet Archive of all unAPI resources, I do care where(unapi 
baseURL) and when (response time) that I got them; in a third case, I may 
build my own server/client inside of firewall, so how to deal with it is 
solely my business.

With all those possibilities, I don't think you want to limit the 
capability of unAPI to some pre-defined profiles, such as private or 
public, or transparent. This is really a decision of unAPI server or 
service implementation. I may choose well-known URIs when I intend to have 
the world use my data; or I can choose any private URIs if I want two 
linux box talk to each other. Again, there are lots of nice discussions 
about URI beyond scope of unAPI.

xiaoming