Web resource: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:10, 14 February 2008

Revision as of 10:13, 14 February 2008

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== History ==

The concept of resource has evolvedlied during the Web history, from the early notion of static addressable [[document]] or [[file]], to a more generic and abstract definition, now encompassing every ''thing'' or [[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) were not 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 ===

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If examples in this document are still limited to physical entities, the definition opens the door to more abstract resources. Providing a concept is given an identity, and this identity is expressed by a well-formed URI, then a concept can be a resource as well.

In January 2005, RFC 3986 makes this extension of the definition completely explicit:

''... abstract concepts can be resources, such as the operators and operands of a mathematical equation, the types of a relationship (e.g., "parent" or "employee"), or numeric values (e.g., zero, one, and infinity).''

== Resources in RDF and the Semantic Web ==