RE: proposal for standard NCBI database URI

--Chris
> Genes should have their own URIs? That's some 10^16 or so 
> URIs just for the volume of space that I'm occupying right now.

So what is the problem?  There are more concepts exist in the world than
each of us know. Does it limit ourself from living or learning or working?
The number of URI is unlimited, what is the big deal?  The issue is not
about space (by the way, how much space is a reasonable space anyway), the
issue is the design and management.    

> More useful would be a URI for gene types - eg a URI for the 
> type "Homo sapiens p53 gene" (or an allele thereof).

Ontologies should exist in any granuality and on any scale, saying one type
of ontology is more useful than another is arbitrary.  A pacifier is very
useful to my 10-month old son but completely useless to me.  Vice versa is
my laptop to him.

Having 10^16 or even 10^16000 genes doesn't matter. What matters is how we
can carefully modulizes the URIs so that we don't have to import those
irrelevant concepts.

Cheers,

Xiaoshu

Received on Thursday, 11 May 2006 13:58:52 UTC