title: What is the significance of trailing slashes in a namespace URI?
body: <p>I have been studying SOAP and WSDL in preparation for implementing a web service.  One thing that I have encountered that puzzles me is that some of the URIs that I have seen use a trailing slash such as:</p>
  
  <pre><code>http://www.w3.org/some-namespace/
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>while other examples that I have studied omit this trailing slash.  I really have several questions regarding this:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>What is the significance of the trailing slash?</li>
  <li>Is the URI, http://www.w3.org/some-namespace the same as http://www.w3.org/some-namespace/?</li>
  <li>If they are not the same, how do I decide when one form is warranted versus another?</li>
  <li>I have read the guidelines given by w3c regarding URI's and these appear to indicate that that URI should be considered equal only if the case-sensitive comparison of the URI strings are considered equal.  Is this interpretation correct?</li>
  </ul>