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TAG Product: URI Documentation Discovery

DRAFT 2012-06-06 by JAR, with a variety of changes; schedule pushed out 3 months

(Note: The problem to be solved has been stated and tracked under TAG issue 57. Some proposals for addressing this issue - but not all of them - propose to re-open TAG issue 14 (httpRange-14), which although closed in 2005 continues to be a source of controversy.)

Goals

The goal of this work is to develop an architecture for the provision and discovery of documentation for the meaning and use of individual URIs. Ideally the architecture would be simple, general, performant, consistent with the rest of Web architecture, and accepted by the Semantic Web and Linked Data communities.

It is not clear that this goal is achievable. An alternative direction for the TAG would be a considered decision to leave off pursuit of this project. That would not be a failure.

Success criteria

• Uptake
• Promotion of consistent use of URIs among the diverse RDF documents in which the URIs are used, to make data merges easier
• Consensus specification for easier deployment of URI documentation for 'hashless' URIs compared to 303 redirects, and/or broader acceptance of 'hash' URIs
• Consensus specification for more efficient deployment of URI documentation for 'hashless' URIs compared to 303 redirects, and/or broader acceptance of 'hash' URIs

• Well-reasoned termination of this work within the TAG

Key deliverables and dates

• December 2011: (a) draft call for httpRange-14 change proposals, (b) a working-draft-like document to act as a baseline against which change proposals are to be written
• October 2012: PR(s) or similar document covering the following:
  1. URI documentation discovery architecture
  2. ontology (RDF vocabulary) as needed
• October 2012: TAG Note or similar document on semantics of metadata for 'information resources' (perhaps part of the PR)

Schedule

• 20 Jun 2011: Revise the two issue-57 drafts, put out for review on semantic-web and/or LOD lists
• 31 Dec: First editor's draft of potential arch. rec. (baseline)
• 31 Dec: Draft call for change proposals to same
• 29 Feb 2012: Call for change proposals to same
• 29 Mar: End call for change proposals to same, collaborative development of proposals continues
• 2-4 Apr: Extensive TAG F2F discussion
• 26 Apr: Use case matrix prepared
• 30 Jun: Subset of TAG prepares evaluation of proposals
• 15 Jul: "Town meeting" if required
• 15 Aug: draft of statement (Architectural Recommendation, termination, or handoff) (note: TPAC 2012 publication freeze is mid-October)
• 31 Aug: FPWD (if Architectural Recommendation track is chosen)
• 31 Oct: PR (if Architectural Recommendation track is chosen)

Drafts

• Understanding URI Hosting Practice as Support for Documentation Discovery: Editor's Draft 29 February 2012 (baseline for change proposals)
• Generic Resources and Web Metadata: Editor's Draft 27 January June 2012 by Jonathan A Rees (announcement email 17 May 2011)

Other working documents

• Interoperability of referential uses of hashless URIs by Jonathan A Rees (announcement email 22 Aug 2011)
• Providing and discovering URI Documentation by Jonathan A Rees (announcement email 25 June 2011) (still ongoing as of 2 Feb 2012)
• Call for change proposals (email)
• Review of TAG issues related to "URI meaning" (28 Feb 2011)
• Issue-57 home page in W3C wiki, with links to works in progress, including
  • list of use cases
  • list of proposals
  • proposal vs. use case matrix

TAG members assigned

Jonathan Rees, Jeni Tennison, Henry S. Thompson

Relevant discussion of process

• Discussion at June 2011 F2F
• JAR's proposed process (6 Nov 2011)
• TAG teleconference discussion on 22 December 2011
• Discussion at January 2012 F2F

TAG issues

• ISSUE-57 Mechanisms for obtaining information about the meaning of a given URI
• ISSUE-14 What is the range of the HTTP dereference function? (closed)
• ISSUE-63 Metadata Architecture for the Web - the connection is tangential; relevant only in that URIs are sometimes used to designate metadata subjects
• ISSUE-62 Uniform Access to Server-provided Metadata - this covers the special case of documentation for URIs referring to "information resources".

TAG actions

• ACTION-624: on - Jonathan Rees - Draft for TAG consideration a call for httpRange-14 change proposals - Due: 2011-12-31 - CLOSED
• ACTION-625: on - Noah Mendelsohn - Schedule followup discussion of http://www.w3.org/wiki/HttpRange14Options (per agreement in Santa Clara) - Due: 2011-12-21 - CLOSED
• ACTION-691 on Jonathan Rees to Prepare table as described in 2012-04-04 minutes, for TAG review - due 2012-04-24, CLOSED