To what degree is it a best practice to implement "cool" URLs as
redirects?
I manage a small database of electronic texts (approximately 20,000
items). Because the content is in a database I can create reams of
reports against it. Browsable lists by title, author, and keyword/
subject. I can index the lot with Solr/Lucene. I can create various
versions of the content: 1) plain text, 2) simple HTML, 3) HTML
complete with a handy-dandy floating palette supporting various
services against the texts, 4) PDF. Etc. About 18 months ago I started
creating RDF files representing the texts. For example, Thomas More's
Utopia. [1]
My next self-assigned project is to present my small database as a set
of linked data. To this end I have written a mod_perl module that
dereferences a URI. For example [2], given a key, the module
negotiates content, returns a 303, and a URL to RDF or HTML
representations.
Now, my question is, should the URLs I return be the long ugly ones
pointing to actual files on my file system, or can they be "cool" URLs
that are actually redirects? In other words, instead of returning
something like this:
http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/english/1500-1599/more-utopia-221.rdf
is it acceptable to return something like this and have it redirected
to the URL above:
http://infomotions.com/etexts/rdf/more-utopia-221
Similarly, when returning URLs pointing to an HTML representation,
should I return A or something more like B:
A.
http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/english/1500-1599/more-utopia-221.htm
B. http://infomotions.com/etexts/html/more-utopia-221
Once I figure out the answers to these questions, then I can start
cleaning up my RDF files and including the "best" URIs in them.
[1] Utopia -
http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/english/1500-1599/more-utopia-221.rdf
[2] dereference - http://infomotions.com/etexts/id/more-utopia-221
--
Eric Lease Morgan
Infomotions, Inc.
