I am a software developer at Landcare Research in New Zealand, where we are developing a names taxonomic database and web service. We are at present deciding on a unique identifier that will identify a specific Name, Specimen, Vernacular, Reference etc, and would like to add my comments.

We currently favour a GUID identifier for several reasons:

- it is guaranteed to be unique globally, and can be created anywhere, anytime by any server or client machine - it has no meaning as to where the data is physically located and will there not confuse any user about this - it is not as usable by the user as ids such as integers, and a meaningful id can lead to confusion/errors - most id mechanisms, especially URI/URN ids require a 'governing body' to handle namespaces/urls to ensure every URN is unique, whereas a GUID is always unique

I do think a URL of some kind would be useful for things such as global searches of multiple databases, as this will allow the search to go directly to the data source where the name, referene, etc comes from. But this should not be part of its ID. Maybe a name/id should have several foms, a GUID for an ID and a URL + a GUID for a fully specified name.

What are the current thoughts on these ideas?