Web Resource Identity

[Stephen Owens]

Paul,

> -----Original Message-----
> Summary:
>
> I believe that the Web needs a concept of a canonical URL, if it doesn't
> already have one. Retrieving a document or the HEAD for the document
> should describe the canonical URL. I wouldn't mind if the canonical URL
> was a totally unreadable UUID as long as I can take two URLs and figure
> out whether they refer to two things that happen to have the same content
> or actually refer to the SAME THING.
>

Should the identity of the URL be defined by the content of the URL or by
the intent/subject of that content? I ask because the same URL retrieved by
two different browsers could differ wildly based on a server side browser
detect. (Oh it's IE5, I'll send the XML version, Netscape 4, I'll send out
something with layers).

Should they still share a UUID? If not what's the relationship between URLs
and UUIDs?

regards,

Stephen Owens
Corner Software


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