Overloaded URIs (was Re: XLink: behavior must go!)

[Oren Ben-Kiki]

Simon St.Laurent <simonstl at simonstl.com> wrote:
>How much more weight should we really be putting on URIs?  We're going to
>need to be issuing directories of URIs and their meanings in different
>(Web, namespaces, now XLink) context if this keeps up.  I realize that
>they're about the only mechanism for which large-scale unique registration
>is currently available, but wow, this could be genuinely ugly in a few
>years (even months!).


It's genuinely ugly already :-) As you point out, don't really have a
choice. The alternatives have been pretty thoroughly discussed in the SAX
extensions naming threads a few months back, and all boil down to URIs or
something else based on DNS.

I haven't thought of the problem of the same URI used in different contexts
(namespaces, XLink, maybe a name in XSLT). I think the recommended practice
should be not to use the same URI in more then one context. I'd hesitate to
make it an actual requirement, though, unless sufficient experience is
gained. Another thing to keep in mind for version 2 of your favorite XML
standard...

Have fun,

    Oren Ben-Kiki


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