[tdwg-guid] Is the http proxy of an LSID a GUID as well?
Ricardo Pereira
ricardo at tdwg.org
Wed Jun 13 14:39:08 CEST 2007
Hi Bob,
Personally, I would hold on to pure LSIDs and avoid using the http
proxy as a GUID as much as possible, just to make sure my clients are
robust enough. However, the semantics of the proxy software and the RDF
returned when the identifier is resolved allow clients to assume the
http proxy is in fact a GUID.
Below is an example of RDF that you get back when you resolve the
proxy LSID.
<rdf:RDF>
<rdf:Description rdf:about="urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:11815">
<dc:identifier>urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:11815</dc:identifier>
<owl:sameAs
rdf:resource="http://lsid.tdwg.org/urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:11815" />
...
In the case above, the LSID in its pure for is used as an identifier
in *rdf:about* and *<dc:identifier>* (the namespace dc stands for Dublin
Core.) However, the *<owl:sameAs>* statement asserts that both the LSID
and its http proxy are equivalent and interchangeable. The proxy (the
software at http://lsid.tdwg.org, for example) is the agent that
actually implements that equivalence between the identifiers, without
however asserting anything about resolvability of the proxied LSID. In
my opinion, you can only assume that the proxy software will be able to
resolve a given identifier as long as the proxy software itself and the
LSID authority are operational. The proxy software cannot be deemed as
an authority of that LSID. I think that this was your original concern,
wasn't it?
In summary, there is no problem assuming that a proxy version of an
LSID is a GUID. But there are operational implications of using either
form. It will all depend on whether the client is aware of the LSID
spec and its particular implementation. For example, if your client
isn't aware of LSID spec, then you have no choice other than storing and
using the proxy version to get back to the object associated with the
ID. The client may use the pure LSID as a URI for internal calculations,
such as graph merging and querying, but it won't be able to resolve it
directly.
On the other hand, if your client is aware of the LSID spec, you
have more options. You know how to get from an LSID to a proxy version
and back. You can use it in your advantage, or not. You may want to
store both versions so that your client is more robust to link rot, and
so on.
Cheers,
Ricardo
Bob Morris wrote:
> Is the http proxy a GUID?
More information about the tdwg-tag
mailing list