Re: ID primitive

Can you be more specific, Karl?

On Feb 24, 2011, at 10:13 AM, Seiler, Karl wrote:

> I like the idea of proposing a Places unique and persistent ID model is a unique object URI.
> 
> 
> _______________________________
> Karl Seiler
> Director Location Technology & Services
> NAVTEQ - Chicago
> (T)  +312-894-7231
> (M) +312-375-5932
> www.navteq.com
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-poiwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-poiwg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Jens de Smit
> Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 3:15 AM
> To: Public POI @ W3C
> Subject: Re: ID primitive
> 
> All right,
> 
> Let's say we use URIs as identifiers. What would be the consequences?
> 
> - URIs are inherently less compact than binary numbers, so consumer
> more storage/bandwidth
> - URIs can carry semantic meaning. Is this a potential problem, a benefit, both?
> - would we allow any URI or only dereferenceable URIs (to support linked data)?
> 
> 
> I think Karl made a good start with a list of requirements. Let's
> address those while we're at it:
> 
> ·         Unique - not-named-based identification
> 
> I think we can come up with a unicity agreement fairly easily. I'm not
> sure what Karl meant by "not-named-based identification"
> 
> ·         Key - able to be used as a primary key
> 
> URIs are simple character strings. IRIs are a bit more complex as they
> can contain multi-byte characters, but modern data storage systems can
> handle this. I see no technical objection against using URIs as
> primary keys, unless an expert can argue to me that this is horribly
> inefficient and will cause systems to break down.
> 
> ·         Persistent - does not change unless a key large scale change
> to the object warrants (rare)
> 
> URIs are very good at being persistent. Judging from all the broken
> links in the internet, many URLs are still around even though their
> associated content is not...
> 
> ·         Efficient - does not consume large bandwidth to distribute
> 
> URIs tend to be more verbose than numbers. However, unless people go
> out of their way to create huge URIs any single URI should fit within
> the MTU of almost any network in existence. Compared to all the
> overhead of a transfer I'd say a URI is efficient enough.
> 
> ·         Informative - can potentially contain some high level
> information about the object to circumvent always having to complete a
> round trip to the content service to determine if the object is of
> interest (country code, basic type - point, line, area, ownership  -
> private, public)
> 
> URIs can contain quite a bit of info. We must take care not to try and
> fit the whole spec into a URI though, just critical information...
> 
> 
> Okay people, time to associate freely :)
> 
> Jens
> 
> 
> 
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Alex Hill Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Augmented Environments Laboratory
Georgia Institute of Technology
http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/lab