Re: [w3c/browser-payment-api] Identifiers or Locators (#150)

On 2016-04-21 14:27, ianbjacobs wrote:
> @dret <https://github.com/dret>,
> My personal view is that:
>   * the primary computation on these identifiers will be equivalence
>     testing.

very good. that's what identifiers are for.

>   * it is useful to ALSO be able to dereference them. I have tried to
>     make the case for using URIs and dereferencing them to get the
>     relevant payment method specification. I have not converted many people.

one of my hobbies is to preach about the difference between identifiers 
and locators. conflating these concepts sometimes can be a bad idea. my 
view is that in this case, what you want is an identifier, and nothing 
more. *if* the spec uses URIs are the identifier namespace, then nothing 
keeps people from using HTTP URIs, but personally, if i minted such an 
identifier, i'd use a URN, making clear that's it's just an identifier, 
and then would publish a spec that defines that URN.

> @adrianba <https://github.com/adrianba> and perhaps others have cited
> the risk of high-volume (and likely unnecessary) dereferencing.

yup. and the question is what it buys you. if, as @adrianba pointed out, 
it is highly unlikely that the URI dereferences to something that allows 
a client to on-the-fly learn new payment schemes, then all a HTTP URI 
buys you is a potential DDOS problem that if it goes dark very well may 
take a substantial share of badly implemented clients down with it that 
depend on the URI actually responding. that's quite a high risk for not 
that much reward.


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