Re: PURLs don't matter, at least in the LOD world

A quick related question - does anyone know the status of "purl.oclc.org" -
there was a point in time where the service suggested that this new
hostname was going to be the new proper host for purl.org urls.

I hope they have abandoned this idea, as one sure way to affect url
longevity is to include a organisational brand in it ;)

Ben
On Feb 18, 2012 1:02 PM, "Dave Reynolds" <dave.e.reynolds@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 17/02/12 21:08, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>
>> On 2/17/12 2:18 PM, David Booth wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 2012-02-17 at 18:48 +0000, Hugh Glaser wrote:
>>> [ . . . ]
>>>
>>>> What happens if I have http://purl.org/dbpedia/Tokyo, which is set to
>>>> go to http://dbpedia.org/resource/**Tokyo<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tokyo>
>>>> ?
>>>> I have (a), (b) and (c) as before.
>>>> Now if dbpedia.org goes Phut!, we are in exactly the same situation -
>>>> (b) gets lost.
>>>>
>>> No, the idea is that the administrator for http://purl.org/dbpedia/
>>> updates the redirect, to point to whatever new site is hosting the
>>> dbpedia data, so the http://purl.org/dbpedia/Tokyo still works.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  David,
>>
>> But any admin that oversees a DNS server can do the same thing. What's
>> special about purl in this context?
>>
>
> Precisely that they don't require an admin with power over the DNS
> registration :)
>
> To me the PURL design pattern is about delegation authority and it's an
> important pattern.
>
> Two specific use cases at different extremes:
>
> (1) An individual is creating a small vocabulary that they would like to
> see used widely but don't have a nice brand-neutral stable domain of their
> own they can use for the purpose. This one has already been covered in the
> discussion.
>
> (2) I'm a big organization, say the UK Government. I want to use a
> particular domain (well a set of subdomains) for publishing my data, say *.
> data.gov.uk. The domain choice is important - it has credibility and
> promises long term stability.  Yet I want to decentralize the publication
> itself, I want different departments and agencies to publish data and
> identifiers within the subdomains. The subdomains are supposed to be
> organization-neural yet the people doing the publication will be based in
> specific organizations. The PURL design pattern (though not necessarily the
> specific PURL implementation) is an excellent way to manage the delegation
> that makes that possible.
>
> So my summary answer to Hugh is - they are much more important to the
> publisher than to the consumer.
>
> Dave
>
>