Re: URNs vs. HTTP-URIs at CEUR-WS

On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 14:55 +0000, Graham Klyne wrote:
> In my view, there are no purely *technical* advantages to this approach - 
> indeed, technically it's an extra level of complication.

Agreed.

> 
> But, there may be *social* advantages:  many people are still wary (and with 
> some cause in some environments) of using http: URIs as persistent identifiers. 
> The community may feel more comfortable with, and hence more likely to adopt, 
> something that is so clearly signposted as a persistent identifier.

But even this is a misguided "advantage", as it evaporates when people
eventually realize that http URIs can do everything their special
purpose identifiers can do, but http URIs have far greater up-take
(a/k/a the network effect).

David Booth

> 
> Of course, all the considerations of "cool URIs" [1] still apply.
> 
> #g
> --
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
> 
> 
> Michael Schneider wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > Here is something that makes me wonder:
> > 
> > CEUR-WS at
> > 
> >     http://ceur-ws.org
> > 
> > is a service for scientific workshops to publish their proceedings. The
> > complete workshop proceedings are freely available at HTTP-URIs such as
> > 
> >     http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-560
> > 
> > I consider this a good and stable URI scheme.
> > 
> > Now I find the following statement on the service's main page:
> > 
> >     27-Jan-2010: We have started to assign persistent 
> >     identifiers (URN) to published volumes. You can 
> >     resolve them either by installing URN Support 
> >     as a plug-in to your browser or use a web-based resolver, 
> >     e.g. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0074-560-7 
> >     for Vol-560.
> > 
> > Does anyone have an idea what is the advantage of having this additional URN
> > scheme compared to the HTTP-URI scheme used so far (which is still valid, of
> > course). Do I miss something obvious?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Michael
> > 
> > --
> > Dipl.-Inform. Michael Schneider
> > Research Scientist, Information Process Engineering (IPE)
> > Tel  : +49-721-9654-726
> > Fax  : +49-721-9654-727
> > Email: michael.schneider@fzi.de
> > WWW  : http://www.fzi.de/michael.schneider
> > =======================================================================
> > FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe
> > Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14, D-76131 Karlsruhe
> > Tel.: +49-721-9654-0, Fax: +49-721-9654-959
> > Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts, Az 14-0563.1, RP Karlsruhe
> > Vorstand: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rüdiger Dillmann, Dipl. Wi.-Ing. Michael Flor,
> > Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolffried Stucky, Prof. Dr. Rudi Studer
> > Vorsitzender des Kuratoriums: Ministerialdirigent Günther Leßnerkraus
> > =======================================================================
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
Cleveland Clinic (contractor)

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of Cleveland Clinic.

Received on Monday, 1 February 2010 20:00:42 UTC