Web resource: Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Identifiable entity on the  World Wide Web}}

{{Multiple issues|{{more footnotes|date=August 2018}}

{{essay|date=August 2018}}

{{original research|date=August 2018}}|collapsed=yes|section=y}}

A '''web resource''' is any identifiable resource (digital, physical, or abstract) present on or connected to the [[World Wide Web]].<ref name="rfc3986">[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986 RFC 3986 Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax]</ref><ref name="fielding_dissertation">[https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm Roy T. Fielding's Dissertation]</ref><ref name="uri_identify">[https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/HTTP-URI.html What do HTTP URIs Identify?], by [[Tim Berners-Lee]]</ref> Resources are identified using [[Uniform Resource Identifier]]s (URIURIs).<ref name="rfc3986" /><ref name="rfc1738">RFC 1738 Uniform Resource Locators (URL)</ref> In the [[Semantic Web]], web resources and their semantic properties are described using the [[Resource Description Framework]] (RDF).<ref name="rdf_index">[https://www.w3.org/standards/techs/rdf RDF Current Status]</ref>

The concept of a web ''resource'' has evolved during the Web's history, from the early notion of static addressable [[Electronic document|document]]s or [[Computer file|file]]s, to a more generic and abstract definition, now encompassing every "thing" or [[wikt:entity|entity]] that can be identified, named, addressed or handled, in any way whatsoever, in the web at large, or in any networked information system. The declarative aspects of a resource (identification and naming) and its functional aspects (addressing and technical handling) weren't clearly distinct in the early specifications of the web, and the very definition of the concept has been the subject of long and still open debate involving difficult, and often arcane, technical, social, linguistic and philosophical issues.

== From documents and files to web resources ==

In the early specifications of the web (1990–1994), the term ''resource'' is barely used at all. The web is designed as a network of more or less static addressable objects, basically files and documents, linked using [[URL|Uniform Resource Locators]] (URLs). A web resource is implicitly defined as something which can be identified. The identification serves two distinct purposes: naming and addressing; the latter only depends on a protocol. It is notable that RFC 1630 does not attempt to define at all the notion of resource; actually it barely uses the term besides its occurrence in Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), Uniform Resource Locator (URL), and [[Uniform Resource Name]] (URN), and still speaks about "Objects of the Network".

RFC 1738 (December 1994) further specifies URLs, the term "Universal" being changed to "Uniform". The document is making a more systematic use of ''resource'' to refer to objects which are "available", or "can be located and accessed" through the internet. There again, the term ''resource'' itself is not explicitly defined.

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===Using HTTP URIs to identify abstract resources===

[[URL]]s, particularly [[uniform resource identifier|HTTP URI]]s, are frequently used to identify abstract resources, such as classes, properties or other kind of concepts. Examples can be found in RDFS or OWL [[Ontology (computer science)|ontologies]]. Since such URIs are associated with the HTTP protocol, the question arose of which kind of representation, if any, should one get for such resources through this protocol, typically using a web browser, and if the syntax of the URI itself could help to differentiate "abstract" resources from "information" resources. The URI specifications such as RFC 3986 left to the protocol specification the task of defining actions performed on the resources and they don'tdo not provide any answer to this question. It had been suggested that an HTTP URI identifying a resource in the original sense, such as a file, document, or any kind of so-called information resource, should be "slash" URIs — in other words, should not contain a [[fragment identifier]], whereas a URI used to identify a concept or abstract resource should be a "hash" URI using a fragment identifier.

For example: <code><nowiki>http://www.example.org/catalogue/widgets.html</nowiki></code> would both identify and locate a web page (maybe providing some human-readable description of the widgets sold by Silly Widgets, Inc.) whereas <code><nowiki>http://www.example.org/ontology#Widget</nowiki></code> would identify the abstract concept or class "Widget" in this company ontology, and would not necessarily retrieve any physical resource through [[HTTP protocol]]. But it has been answered that such a distinction is impossible to enforce in practice, and famous standard vocabularies provide counter-examples widely used. For example, the [[Dublin Core]] concepts such as "title", "publisher", "creator" are identified by "slash" URIs like <code><nowiki>http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title</nowiki></code>.

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==See also==

*[[Address bar]]

*[[Resource (computer science)]]

*[[Resource-oriented architecture]] (ROA)

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**[http://www.w3.org/2006/04/irw65/urisym.html A Pragmatic Theory of Reference for the Web], by [[Dan Connolly (computer scientist)|Dan Connolly]].

**[http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/irw2006/presentations/HayesSlides.pdf In Defense of Ambiguity], by [[Patrick J. Hayes|Patrick Hayes]].

*[http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS//Vol-201/43.pdf Towards an OWL ontology for identity on the web], by Valentina Presutti and Aldo Gangemi, [http://swapconf.it/2006/ SWAP2006 conference] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061224214413/http://www.swapconf.it/2006/ |date=2006-12-24 }}.

{{refend}}