Findings of the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG)

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The primary activity of the TAG is to develop Architectural Recommendations. The TAG findings listed below document fundamental principles that should be adhered to by all Web components. The TAG expects to include these findings in the TAG's Architectural Recommendations, to be published according to the requirements of the W3C Recommendation Track process.

This page documents TAG findings, which may either be approved or draft findings.

The TAG gathers input from the community as it works on draft findings. Once the TAG approves finding, it announces it to www-tag as an approved finding. The TAG may review the finding if there is substantial opposition.

Approved findings

Mapping between URIs and Internet media types (27 May 2002)
Consistency of Formatting Property Names, Values, and Semantics (25 Jul 2002)
"Deep Linking" in the World Wide Web (11 Sep 2003)
Using QNames as Identifiers (17 March 2004)
URIs, Addressability, and the use of HTTP GET and POST (21 March 2004)
Internet Media Type registration, consistency of use (30 April 2004)
How should the problem of identifying ID semantics in XML languages be addressed in the absence of a DTD? (30 November 2004)
The Disposition of Names in an XML Namespace (9 January 2006)
The Rule of Least Power (23 February 2006)
Authoritative Metadata (22 April 2013)
On Linking Alternative Formats To Enable Discovery And Publishing (1st November 2006)
The use of Metadata in URIs (2 January 2007)
Associating Resources with Namespaces (25 June 2008)
The Self-Describing Web (7 February 2009)
Identifying Application State (1 December 2011)

Draft findings

Passwords in the Clear
Abstract Component References
XML Chunk Equality
URI Schemes and Web Protocols
URNs, Namespaces and Registries
Extending and Versioning Languages: Terminology
Extending and Versioning Languages: Compatibility Strategies
Extending and Versioning Languages: XML Languages
State in Web application design
Dereferencing HTTP URIs (Abandoned in favour of "Cool URIs for the Semantic Web")
Usage Patterns For Client-Side URL parameters

Archival findings

Separation of semantic and presentational markup, to the extent possible, is architecturally sound

About TAG findings

At its 4 Nov 2002 teleconference, the TAG agreed to adopt the following policy for managing findings versions.

A finding draft should be treated like a W3C technical report:

After announcement of a draft, we don't modify it.
Each draft has a latest/this version URI and links to the previous version.
The status section of a finding draft indicates whether the document is a draft/for review in light of TAG consensus/ approved by the TAG.

Having approved a finding:

For minor changes thereafter, we continue to publish updates using the same "latest version URI" (i.e., it remains part of the same document series). It is possible for the latest version of the series to be "not yet approved". That should be a temporary state, however. Findings in an intermediate state should refer to the previous approved version.
For major changes, we can start a new series (with a different "latest version URI"). If we start a new series, the new series should explain its relation to the old one (e.g., whether the new series supersedes the old series).

Tim Berners-Lee, Noah Mendelsohn, co-chair
Last modified: $Date: 2013-05-01 02:45:55 $ by $Author: nmendels $