On 2 Sep 2009, at 03:39 , Henry S. Thompson wrote:

>
> Tsao, Scott writes:
>
>> ...
>
>> And, is the use of them for namespace names (in lieu of URN)
>> recommended by standards organizations such as W3C and OASIS?
>
> Absolutely.  OASIS have backed off using URNs as namespace names, and
> W3C TAG strongly recommends using http: URIs for this purpose.
>
>> The committee (we are participating in) seems to think that we
>> should register a formal URN namespace for "global" uses like OASIS
>> and S1000D have done [1], because that would allow us to use this
>> unique namespace as part of our schema namespace structure for
>> different schemas in different specifications.
>
> Why doesn't the same apply for e.g. http://[your committee]/ 
> namespaces/xxx?
>
> Which has the additional benefit that as I mentioned before, you can
> document your namespace at that URI...

The record would not be complete without someone observing
that it also has the disadvantage that if the domain name
registration for [your committee] ever lapses, there is no
guarantee that the new owner will refrain from assigning
a new meaning to http://[your committee]/namespaces/xxx

The TAG is presumably aware of this problem (having had it
pointed out to them more than once), and has presumably
decided that it does not matter enough to make a difference.
But as long as domain names are allowed to be used more
than once by different owners, no system of unique
identifiers built on the domain name system actually
guarantees uniqueness of identifier.

In the short run, that doesn't matter.  Whether it matters
in the long run depends on how long you want things to
work, and how dependent you want to be on netscape.com,
for example, continuing to denote what it once denoted.


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