[tdwg-tag] Blog: UUIDs may be Dangerous

Gregor Hagedorn g.m.hagedorn at gmail.com
Tue Nov 25 06:25:15 CET 2008


I think Dave's comments are worth a lot :-). I understand that both
IDs and their mappings to resolvers should be technology-neutral. I
would greatly welcome this.

My own position is based on a much more limited perspective: Does the
identifier system plays well with standard software, or is it creating
a walled garden for those installing custom LSID software?

http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/GUID/LsidHttpProxyUsageRecommendation
is a valid attempt to support semantic reasoners. It is, as stated in
its purpose, for those desiring to use LSIDs at all, and thus by
necessity asymmetrical. It is just a bit complicated (and perhaps
error prone) to publish all your data under LSIDs, but then never use
them when referring to your own data.

With a technology independent ID, you could use http consistently,
without preventing LSID users from translating URL-based-ID to
neutral-ID to LSID-based-ID.

Gregor



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