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Agreed! And that might be the better approach (for a lot of

reasons). My

...

only concern would be to what extent desktop database

applications can uses

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MAC values as primary keys (compared to using something like

long integers)

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efficiently and effectively, when manipulating large datasets

in real time.

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I guess this may be a trivial point in the grand scheme of things -- but ultimately taxonomists will want to be able to work with large

datasets on

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their personal computers.

eh??? MAC addresses /are/ just long integers.

Sorry....I meant "Long" integer in the sense of DB applications, which are 32-bit (4 byte) integers. I had read once that MAC-style GUIDs are not optimized on desktop DB applications for use as primary keys. However, having just done some Google-snooping, I can't confirm that (in fact, if anything, I've found the opposite). So I'm starting to think that my concerns about using about using MAC-style IDs as primary keys are probably a Red Herring.

Once reduced to a digital representation, /everything/ is just a long integer. Hence in the end, for machine use, the differences between different ID schemes come down to a very few criteria, all having to do with programming ease and the effective computability of each of the assertions about the acquisition of IDS and manipulations of them that are required.]. No two schemes are distinguishable solely on the basis that one of them appears to have a representation as integers and one of them appears not to.

Agreed -- but aren't DB applications optimized to utilize certain kinds of ID schemes more effectively/efficiently than other kinds of ID schemes?

Many thanks for the enlightening (and interesting) insights on MAC IDs. It always amazes me that, though I may understand computers better than 95% of people on Earth, the gap between me and the top 1% is much larger than the gap between me and, say, the fish in my aquarium.

I think the important parts of this discussion surround the functional parameters of the GUIDs for biological objects:

1) Should issuance of IDs be controlled from a single source; or freely created by anyone with a computer, anywhere, anytime; or something in-between?

2) Is it important that all biological objects use the same scheme for ID sourcing, or is it advantageous to chose a scheme optimal for each class of object (e.g., privately owned and managed specimen data, vs. publicly owned and managed taxonomic nomenclature data)?

3) Should contextual information about how to resolve the ID be embedded within the ID itself, or should the responsibility of context be relegated to presentation protocols?

4) What is the greater risk to information flow in our context: reliance on a single-point source for all the data resolution, or reliance on many sources functioning simultaneously in order to resolve all of the data? What options for mitigating impediments to data resolution are available to each of these approaches?

Aloha, Rich