Valid, but often useless. :-)

From: Paul Murray [mailto:pmurray@anbg.gov.au]
Sent: Thursday, 9 June 2011 3:22 p.m.
To: Kevin Richards
Cc: Steve Baskauf; tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Why UUIDs alone are not adequate as GUIDs, was Re: ITIS TSNID to uBio NamebankIDs mapping [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

On 09/06/2011, at 1:01 PM, Kevin Richards wrote:

I don’t think any URNs work with typical semantic web tools do they? Ie they don’t know how to resolve them.

A tool does not need to be able to resolve a uri to be able to treat it as an identifier about which it knows facts. We can say

<http://example.org/Fred> <http://example.org/brother-of> <http://example.org/Sue>

And let a reasoner deduce that Sue is sibling-of Fred, even with no http server at example.org. Of course, most tools on seeing a URI that is a HTTP URL will (or can) also take that additional step and pull down data about Fred and Sue - that's what "linked data" is about. But thats an additional step and is not a requirement. Without resolution, the tool knows nothing about the things identified by those ids other than what it is explicitly given. But that's valid.

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