[OpenID] openid, foaf and attribute exchange

[Mark Wahl]

Peter Williams wrote:

> or is compliance going to assume that OP Consumers and OP Providers must
> interface to RDF resources? 

The RDF resources for OpenID AX attribute types are identifiers that are
URIs of the "http" or "https" schemes.  OpenID Providers and Consumers
that implement OpenID AX must simply know what http/https URIs are,
specifically how to compare two URIs for equality.  They already have
that function for comparing OpenID URIs themselves.  I would not expect
that all OpenID implementations would ever be REQUIRED to implement RDF
(or RDFa) generation or parsing.  RDF gives a 'value add' for
implementations that wish to discover more information about an attribute
type beyond "its URI".

>  Do I have to know what an RDF ontology
> even is, merely to send my OpenID to a form?

No, on two levels.

First, you don't need to know, because logging in with an OpenID doesn't
require OpenID AX, and thus no OpenID AX attribute type metadata would be
exchanged.

Second, do you have to know what DNS A records are or SGML entities
are to send an OpenID to a form? No, because the software provides
appropriate abstractions for these underlying technology concepts.
I wouldn't expect that a typical end user would ever want to see RDF
(or XRDS) outside of them doing a semantic equivalent of "View Source".

Mark Wahl
Informed Control Inc.