Aggregation/Resource Map relationship question - OAI-ORE

Message from discussion Aggregation/Resource Map relationship question
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Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:02:29 -0400
From: Simeon Warner <sim...@cs.cornell.edu>
To: oai-ore@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Aggregation/Resource Map relationship question
Message-ID: <20080818130229.GA13804@ice.cs.cornell.edu>
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On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 06:17:24PM -0700, Jeff Young wrote:
> On Aug 14, 3:49?pm, Simeon Warner <sim...@cs.cornell.edu> wrote:
> > > "An Aggregation does not have a representation..."
> > > "the Aggregation URI A-1 must yield or lead to a Resource Map when
> > > dereferenced."
> >
> > > Is this still the current thinking? If so, what's wrong with Resource
> > > Maps being accepted as representations of the Aggregation?
> >
> > Well, this is a difference between English and the Architecture of the
> > World Wide Web [AWWW] document.
>
> I think I see the source of my confusion now. This isn't the
> difference between English and AWWW et al. It's the difference between
> HTTP and those other things. From an HTTP perspective, a Resource Map
> would make for a perfectly reasonable representation. If the documents
> that have been cited so far explain this somewhere I might accept it,
> although it is damned confusing of them to redefine words like
> "representation" that way.

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 07:28:10PM -0700, Jeff Young wrote:
> Sorry. Let me admit that this sentence from my last message doesn't
> add up:
> 
> > From an HTTP perspective, a Resource Map
> > would make for a perfectly reasonable representation.
> 
> I understand that a Resource Map is not a representation, it is a
> resource that has representations. I still suspect there is a point to
> what I was saying, but I'm afraid that this sentence might permanently
> undermine it. If I'm lucky, I'll go insane before I have time to
> reword it. ;-)

I think this is why we (try to) avoid use of the word "representation"
in the ORE docs except in the strict web architecture sense, e.g when
describing the whe web architecture at
http://www.openarchives.org/ore/0.9/primer.html#Web_Arch.

The fundamental reason why we don't have Aggregation == resource and
Resource Map == representation is that we think they both need to have
identifiers so that we can talk about them. In the web architecture,
resources have URIs as identifiers but representions don't have have
their own id (they are determined/"identified" by the resource URI,
time, request info, phase of moon, etc.).

Cheers,
Simeon