Re: [BioPAX-discuss] LSID Best practices...

EJ>Gary Bader wrote:
GB>> Is there any standard way of resolving LSIDs that are
GB>> used in this way?

EJ>If you are asking how to actually retrieve the data for an LSID, from 
the
EJ>resolution service point of view, then no, I don't think there is any
EJ>standard way. This is probably one of reasons some people favor the use 
of
EJ>URLs as identifiers. I wouldn't go so far, but this is a problem, as 
this
EJ>means that your software needs to be "life-science-aware".

Unless I have completely misunderstood Gary's orginal question as stated 
above, I disagree. There is a standard [1] for dereferencing any LSID and 
retrieving its associated data and metadata documents. This is part of the 
 OMG LSID specification and has been implemented in a number client/server 
language stacks. My own team implemented [2] this standard when creating 
fully client/server protocol stacks for perl, java and a Windows COM 
client. 

In general any LSID name is mapped by the data provider down to a 
collection of ftp/http URLs or web services that the client stack may 
discover and use to retrieve the associated information. This means the 
data bytes for the same object may simultaneously be made available from 
more than once place (hmm..perhaps we should now add bit torrent like 
support to the client software to take advantage of this) as can metadata 
documents. In the case of metadata documents this feature of the protocol 
is useful since it means that metadata information from 3rd parties can be 
incorporated along with that provided by the data provider and seamlessly 
integrated by the clients for a user.



Kindest regards, Sean

[1] http://www.omg.org/docs/dtc/04-05-01.pdf
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/lsid/


--
Sean Martin
IBM Corp.