[SEEK-Taxon] Thoughts on GUIDs

[Robert K. Peet]

Jim,

I very much agree with you on this point.

Bob



On Tue, 25 May 2004, Beach, James H wrote:

> Completely independent of the choice of identifier schemes, is the
> question Nico, Rich and Dave have been tangoing around-- whether the
> identifier should contain explicitly or implicitly any information about
> the identify or the relationship of a concept to something else.
> Embedding version numbers in ID's is additional information, i.e.
> metadata, about the taxon concept that may be present nowhere else.  One
> of the strongest arguments for the evaluation of 'artificial' or
> 'surrogate' key fields in a database context is that the 'key' should
> not contain any implicit or explicit information about the object being
> identified, other than its identity!
>
> If the key itself has information then you will inevitably run into a
> situation where the key will need to be changed because something about
> the information represented by the key value has changed or is in doubt
> or is a matter of interpretation, (thus losing the temporal uniqueness
> of the GUID).  If for example, we decide to embed version numbers within
> the GUID, then there will be relationships between GUIDs that need to be
> maintained and respected and modeled as a consequence of the version
> numbers themselves (sort of an embedded data model within the ID), which
> adds another layer of abstraction to the whole enterprise of managing
> concepts.  Instead of just worrying about mapping the taxonomic
> relationships among concepts using unique IDs as the handles, such as in
> the recent examples, one now has to verify that the subkey/version
> identifiers are accurate (and that may be a matter of differing
> interpretations) and related in the appropriate way that corresponds to
> the taxonomy.
>
> I would recommend that versioning be handled outside of the key or ID.
> Let resolver services deal with version differences based on the
> metadata, don't hard code relationships among concept versions in the
> identifier.
> _____________________________
> James H. Beach
> Biodiversity Research Center
> University of Kansas
> 1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
> Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
> T 785 864-4645, F 785 864-5335
>
>
>
>
>
>

 ====================================================================

 Robert K. Peet, Professor              Phone:  919-962-6942
 Department of Biology, CB#3280         Fax:    919-962-6930
 University of North Carolina           Cell:   919-368-4971
 Chapel Hill, NC  27599-3280  USA       Email:  peet at unc.edu

             http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/

 ====================================================================