# URN Resolution Paths Considered Harmful

Fisher Mark (FisherM@is3.indy.tce.com)
Tue, 20 Jun 95 10:05:00 PDT

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    From: Fisher Mark <FisherM@is3.indy.tce.com>

    To: "'URI'" <uri@bunyip.com>

    Subject: URN Resolution Paths Considered Harmful

    Date: Tue, 20 Jun 95 10:05:00 PDT

    Message-Id: <2FE701FD@MSMAIL.INDY.TCE.COM>

A URN, in my view, should be separate from the method and/or path used to
resolve it. At best, a resolution path could be a hint to the client code
that a particular resolver could be used. I would expect after several
cases where the resolution path was incomplete, wrong, or non-existent,
unless the client could be configured to ignore some subset of all
resolution paths, the human user of the client would just turn off the
embedded resolution path feature, thereby obviating the usefulness of
embedded resolution paths.

A DNS hostname is not listed with the name of the DNS server that could be
used to resolve it ("ftp.foo.bar.com/bar.com/"); the hostname is listed
unadorned ("ftp.foo.bar.com"), with the resolution occurring behind the
scenes.

I would hope that the experience many of us have had in dealing with UUCP
email paths has taught us that manually maintained paths are not usually A
Good Thing. Computers keep better track of paths than humans (TCP/IP
routing out on the Internet depends on this!), so let the computers track
the resolution paths.
======================================================================
Mark Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com Indianapolis, IN

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