Re: [Uri-review] ws: and wss: schemes

[David Booth <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, 2009-09-05 at 13:56 -0400, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 5 Sep 2009 at 17:04, Toby Inkster wrote:
> 
> > In particular, you in your role as authority are free to decree that  
> > this:
> > 
> > 	http://websockets.net/example.com/foo
> > 
> > Represents a Web Sockets path of "/foo" running on port 81 of the  
> > host example.com.
> 
> ...which reminds me of Abraham Lincoln declaring that a tail is a 
> leg, and asking how many legs a horse has... for which the answer is 
> still four, because a tail doesn't become a leg even if somebody in 
> "authority" says so.

You seem to have missed the point.  A string like
"http://websockets.net/" is not *intrinsically* tied to the Web Sockets
protocol any more than the string "wss: is.  It only becomes tied to the
Web Sockets protocol if the social entity that has the *authority* to
decree such a link does so.  In the case of "wss:", that authority
belongs to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).  In the case
of "http://websockets.net/" that authority belongs to the owner of
websockets.net.  (See Architecture of the World Wide Web section
2.2.2.1:
http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#def-uri-ownership )
The principle is *exactly* the same.  

In one case, an agent supporting Web Sockets would recognize the "wss:
prefix, and in the other case, an agent supporting Web Sockets would
recognize the "http://websockets.net/" prefix.  But in the latter case,
an agent that does *not* recognize the "http://websockets.net/" prefix
*might* still be able to do something useful with the URI, by invoking
the HTTP protocol.  Whereas in the former case, an agent that does not
recognize the "wss:" prefix would be unable to do anything further with
it.  This is the benefit of *layering* special purpose protocols on top
of http URIs: it enables good old HTTP to be used as a fallback when
that special purpose protocol is not supported.



-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
Cleveland Clinic (contractor)

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of Cleveland Clinic.