Re: Unique handle generation

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

On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 06:17:44PM +0000, Martin Oldfield wrote:
> >>>>> "Michael" == Michael Mealling <michael@bailey.dscga.com> writes:
>     Michael> That's a step in the right direction, yes. The other main
>     Michael> objection is that of using the 'http' scheme which
>     Michael> contains a domain-name.  A domain-name is too fragil of
>     Michael> an identifier to use for the entities that actually
>     Michael> manage those domain-names (i.e. the registries involved
>     Michael> here should last longer than the average life of their
>     Michael> default domain-names).  IMHO, you want a scheme that a)
>     Michael> has uniqueness b) has persistence and c) does not have
>     Michael> domain-names in it.
> 
> I see your point of view, but isn't it really hard to escape domain
> names somewhere ? 

Sure. You still use domain-names somewhere in the lookup. You just
don't put them in the name itself.

> Consider a scheme where the registry-handle comes from some central
> registry. Don't you then need to have some magic URN which contains a
> list of registry handles and tells the client how to handle them ? The
> alternative would appear to be giving each client a list of registry
> handles and details of how to handle them: perhaps a list is unavoidable
> because I'm sure that some clients will want to only trust certain
> registries.

Sure. But as long as you have that level of redirection you can
easily move those DNS values around. I.e. don't put the DNS values
in the name itself. Instead specify how that non-DNS value points into
DNS so you can find out where the registry-handle currently lives.

> If we do want to have a automated scheme for resolving a handle though
> , then presumably we need some central root which knows how to direct
> all the registry handles, or the handle itself has to tell us where to 
> go. 

Yep. And that's a service that the IANA would provide since it would
act as the registry handle registry itself. Sure, its another root
but root's aren't completely anathema are they? Heck, even if you
use _any_ URI you still have hte IANA as the root since its the
registry for all URI schemes...

> If that's right then isn't this a trade-off between having registry
> handles issued by a central authority who has to keep their URN alive
> forever, or having a multiplicity of URNs but letting everyone make up
> their own registry handle ?

Sure... But the key here is that as long as there is uniqueness of
the registry handles you have a persistent identifier. Its a tradeoff
but in order to make a system that's stable and persistent you'll need
some kind of limited root. IMHO, a single registry of registry handles is
sufficiently lightweight to be reasonable....

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

-MM

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
Sr. Research Engineer   |   www.ga.lp.org/gwinnett     | ICQ#:         14198821
Network Solutions	|          www.lp.org          |  michaelm@netsol.com