[sc34wg3] Interesting issue: electronic resource with dynamic IRI

[Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Inf. Lutz Maicher]

Dear Patrick,

> One of my students has encountered an interesting problem writing a 
> topic map that has addressable subjects.
> The subject in question has a generated IRI that changes with each 
> access.
>
> Granted that there probably is (from within the system) a stable IRI 
> for the subject but that is not knowable to someone outside the system.
>
> My first inclination is that they should create a PSI for the subject.
You should take a look at POWDER [1].  Abstract from the last W3C 
Working Draft:
"The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) facilitates the 
publication of descriptions of multiple resources such as all those 
available from a Web site. This document describes how sets of resources 
may be defined, either for use in Description Resources or in other 
contexts. An OWL Class is to be interpreted as the Resource Set with its 
predicates and objects either defining the characteristics that elements 
of the set share, or directly listing its elements. Resources that are 
directly identified or that can be interpreted as being elements of the 
set can then be used as the subject of further RDF triples."

POWDER is a mechanism to define so called Resource Sets. For example, 
such a Resource Set might include all Resources with a IRI starting with 
"http", coming from a defined resource and end not with ".png". Defining 
a Resource Set will allow to represent statements about all resources 
belonging to this sets. See section 2 of [1] to see the details of the 
Resource set specification mechanism.

This resource set will have a unique PSI an can even be used in Topic 
Maps. The advantage of the usage of POWDER is that you will be able to 
properly map all your randomly created IRIs to a stable IRI. And this 
stable IRI will be used in your topic map.

Does this help?

Greetings from Leipzig
Lutz


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/powder-grouping/

-- 
______________________________________________

Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Inf. Lutz Maicher
Abteilung Automatische Sprachverarbeitung
Institut für Informatik | Universität Leipzig
Johannisgasse 26 | 04103 Leipzig

phone: 0049 - 341 - 97 - 32303
fax:   0049 - 341 - 97 - 32299 
mail: maicher at informatik.uni-leipzig.de
http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~maicher/
http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~tmra/ 

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