[tdwg-tag] LSID HTTP Proxy - design question

[Roderic Page]

Dear Nicky,

I would only regard (1) as a HTTP proxy, as it can take any LSID and  
resolve it. Hence, a proxy needs all the paraphernalia of DNS SRV,  
WSDL, etc.

If you only want to provide a clickable link to the LSID metadata,  
then it's not really a proxy, it's a URL. I notice that Zoobank has  
URLs like this:

http://zoobank.org:80/?lsid=urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:6FFAFC2C-D46B-4959-BA03-C38477B9DFF1

which could be rewritten to something cleaner, as you suggest. Rich  
Pyle has been clever, in that if I try

http://zoobank.org:80/?lsid=urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:20012728-1:1.1

I get bounced to

http://lsid.tdwg.org/summary/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:20012728-1:1.1

which means if the user tries to use http://zoobank.org:80/?lsid= as a  
general LSID proxy, they don't get an ugly error, they still get what  
they were after (albeit not served from Zoobank).

Perhaps this would be the simplest thing for IPNI to implement?

Regards

Rod




On 21 Apr 2009, at 17:41, Nicola Nicolson wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've been looking into setting up an HTTP proxy for the ipni.org  
> LSIDs. I've read the usage recommendations at http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/GUID/LsidHttpProxyUsageRecommendation 
>  but want to ask a question re the design of the proxy itself, ie:
> Should an HTTP proxy for LSIDs behave as:
> (1) a webapp that acts as an LSID "client"
> or
> (2) a mechanism to issue redirects to the metadata address as  
> specified in the LSID authority WSDL
> The latter is simple - I can just set up a mod_rewrite rule so that
> http://lsid.ipni.org/[lsid] is redirected to the HTTP URL for the  
> metadata for the specified LSID. This will of course only work for  
> LSIDs for which ipni.org is the authority, but I think that is OK.
> If the former, I'll need to encode the resolution process: ie parse  
> the LSID, extract the authority, do the DNS lookup, get the WSDL,  
> construct the address etc, BUT it will mean that the HTTP LSID proxy  
> is dependent upon correct functioning of the LSID infrastructure  
> (DNS SRV records, authority WSDL etc). I guess the TDWG LSID proxy  
> behaves this way, but that is to be expected as it can be used as an  
> HTTP proxy for *any* LSID.
> In summary option (1) treats the proxied LSID as *an LSID*, the  
> other really just treats it as a character string.
> Which is preferred?
> cheers,
> Nicky
>
> - Nicola Nicolson
> - Science Applications Development,
> - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,
> - Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3AB, UK
> - email: n.nicolson at rbgkew.org.uk
> - phone: 020-8332-5766
> _______________________________________________
> tdwg-tag mailing list
> tdwg-tag at lists.tdwg.org
> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag
>

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
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