[tdwg-content] Why UUIDs alone are not adequate as GUIDs, was Re: ITIS TSNID to uBio NamebankIDs mapping [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Paul Murray pmurray at anbg.gov.au
Thu Jun 9 05:12:28 CEST 2011


On 09/06/2011, at 12:56 PM, Paul Murray wrote:

> A URI is not a GUID. This:
> 	http://example.org/A9F435E0-8ED7-46DD-BAB4-EA8E5BF41523
> 
> Thus:
> 	urn:uuid:A9F435E0-8ED7-46DD-BAB4-EA8E5BF41523
> is a URI that - according to a w3c standard - corresponds to the 128-bit guid.


To make the semantic web "go" and work with the cool uris, each data source would need to declare that it's cool uri is "same as" the urn:uuid: form. If a third party pulls together an ontology that includes both of those data sources, then that is enough to identify those two cool uris as being same as each other.

If the result of this is that that third party gets semantic inconsistencies (for instance, the two different data sources declaring those objects to be of incompatible types), then so be it: the data sources treat the object identified by that guid in incompatible ways. This is something that must be resolved at the human level. 



> is a URI that - according to a w3c standard - corresponds to the 128-bit guid. This:

A correction: the RFC is not a w3c standard, as such. I think RFCs belong to the IETF.



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