Re: NCBI Resource Locator

Their first example is missing the verb, although they state that the verb
is optional.

http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12345

So apparently you can also write

*http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/get/12345*
**
However, it turns out that this is translated into

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=get&cmd=retrieve&list_uids=12345

Note the db=get !

So the verb, in this case, is being put into the db position. Testing this
theory, try using the "verb" gene. In that case it turns out you don't go to
pubmed at all.

http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/gene/12345

Similarly, if you use a noun "gene", and verb "get" you get a pubmed record
(unknown dbs are apparently taken as "pubmed")

http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/get/12345

So, it would be nice if this was real, but it doesn't look like it is ready
for deployment yet. Probably worth finding out who is responsible and asking
whether there is any intention that is be used. If so, perhaps we could work
with them to make it as useful as it has the potential to be. Obviously
useful would be documentation, access to other formats and versions, and
access to some kind of metadata that would present what options there were
for versions, formats, as well as persistence policy, etc.

-Alan



On 9/10/07, Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> "The NCBI Resource Locator provides stable, uniform addressing for NCBI
> content, making it easy to link to individual records. Some NCBI resources
> also provide services (like search) through these URLs."
>
>
> http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
>
>
> Looks like a gift. Makes a lie of my assertion that there aren't decent
> URIs for NCBI records [in HTML format]. I only found it by trying to track
> down a reference in one of Mark Wilkinson's articles. Wish I had known about
> it ages ago.
>
>
> Does anyone know more about this, such as a list of allowed <noun>s and
> <verb>s? The documentation is pretty spare.
>
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>