Re: Unique handle generation

[Michael Mealling <michael@bailey.dscga.com>]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 05:25:10PM +0000, Martin Oldfield wrote:
> >>>>> "Michael" == Michael Mealling <michael@bailey.dscga.com> writes:
>     Michael> Please. No. I've been involved in a lot of these XML/URI
>     Michael> discusions and you really don't want to do this. Do you
>     Michael> really want to have your system to have to deal with a
>     Michael> registry using "mailto:joe@aol.com" as its registry
>     Michael> identifier? Allowing any URI means you allow _ANY_ URI
>     Michael> here.  The issues surrounding the nearly 100 different
>     Michael> unregistered URIs that folks are using with no
>     Michael> coordination and several conflicts [1][2] make this a
>     Michael> currently very badly managed space. This is the
>     Michael> identifier the _entire_ provreg system is going to depend
>     Michael> on at its _core_. You really don't want it based on such
>     Michael> loose identification scheme...
> 
> So much for that daft idea then!

Sorry about the bluntness there. The pain that was felt in many different
areas created a severe alergic reaction. ;-) 

> If you'll indulge my stupidity for a little longer, 

Not stupidity! Its a good idea that has merit but experience is
in the process of teaching us where that idea is useful and where it
causes problems... (As an aside, I'm involved in the W3C URI Interest
Group where we're discussing exactly these kind of issues and hopefull
we'll be able to issue some guidance soon).

> would you
> objections persist if the URI had to be an http: thing, and the target 
> of the URI had to deliver a particular document ?

That's a step in the right direction, yes. The other main objection
is that of using the 'http' scheme which contains a domain-name.
A domain-name is too fragil of an identifier to use for the entities
that actually manage those domain-names (i.e. the registries involved
here should last longer than the average life of their default domain-names).
IMHO, you want a scheme that a) has uniqueness b) has persistence and c) 
does not have domain-names in it. 

But still, once you limit it like this you've gotten yourself back to 
an identification scheme that is specific to your system (a good thing)
that happens to be a URI (also a good thing). 

-MM

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