Re: Unique handle generation

[George Belotsky <george@register.com>]

Brian:

For entities, it would be possible to take a similar approach.

For example, a domain name might be: <fqdn>+<creating registrar>+<timestamp>

If a name is transferred, the handle stays the same.  If a name is deleted,
and later someone else registers it, the handle will change (which is
probably a good thing in this case).

George.

On Thu, Mar 08, 2001 at 12:42:40PM -0500, Brian W. Spolarich wrote:
> > One record will point out a person (as an example). A person have a 
> > lifetime of say 120 years. We need to find a handle which can have 
> > the unique identifier for at least 120 years.
> 
>   This is a great discussion, but I find myself asking the question:
> is this our problem to solve at the moment?  Creating globally-unique
> identifiers which will live a very, very long time is a pretty tall
> order.
> 
>   Perhaps we're trying to "boil the ocean" with this?
> 
>   Have any other identifiers (other than government-issued things like
> Social Security Numbers, driver's license numbers, and the like) met
> this requirement?
> 
>   I kind of like the digest-based approach (although perhaps SHA-1
> would be a better choice than MD5).  The user can identify themselves
> via some relatively static information such as complete name, 
> city and country of birth, date of birth, etc. and this results in
> a digest that should be guaranteed to be unique.  The user can
> easily reconstitute this identifier by supplying the source information,
> which they should know fairly well.
> 
>   Its not clear to me however how this scheme would facilitate easy
> referencing of entities, so perhaps that's where this concept falls down.
> 
>   -brian

-- 
-----------------------------
George Belotsky
Senior Software Architect
Register.com, inc.
george@register.com
212-798-9127 (phone)
212-798-9876 (fax)