Looking back at the first suggested rule...
We have considered the multiple authority question very much in the field
of e-portfolio systems. Information about contact details would be best
stored in one place under the control of the individual. Information about
qualifications, grades, marks would perhaps better be stored
authoritatively by the institution awarding them. It partly goes back to
the question of what one counts as metadata about what. There may be a
reasonable intepretation of "metadata" under which Stephen's first rule
makes sense. Metadata about qualifications could best be seen in their own
right and not as metadata about people. And opinions are their own
entities. The authority for an opinion is the person holding the opinion,
not the object of the opinion, so perhaps that's not a divisive issue.
If one adopts the URI-as-identifier view, then it still makes sense that
there should be one "way in" to the metadata about a person, even if the
information presented (rather than held) there is actually aggregated from
a number of different authoritative sources. Perhaps one could allow for
common practice by saying that the details of a student held by an
educational institution are not actually metadata about that student, but
metadata about the institution's "customer", who may or may not be
identical to (or identified with) a personally-managed record.
URI as ULN, now there's a provocative thought (probably not original...)
So, perhaps one can qualify Stephen's original: it might be best only to
have one location that acts as the identifier of the individual (and
perhaps the "source"), but information relating to that individual can
easily be distributed across several locations, depending on the various
authorities for that information.
Simon
At 16:13 2005-07-12, Mike Collett wrote:
>Stephen's first rule"
> "metadata for a given entity should never be stored in more than one place.
>If we have, for example, metadata about a given person (say, me), then it
>should be stored in one and only one location. (That does not mean that it
>cannot be aggregated or mirrored, but it does mean that there is one and
>only one location that would constitute the source of information about this
>person, and that aggregators and mirrors would update on a regular basis
>from this source."
>
>I strongly oppose this.
>In addition to the generic danger of "eggs in baskets", learning records
>about a person are complex and managed variously by the person, the
>state(s), by learning organisations and by awarding bodies etc. These
>authorities have various responsibilities to maintain information and
>protect levels of privacy. To centralise this process is not a good idea.
>
>However: to suggest that a particular piece of information has a single
>authority makes more sense. As long as there can be many authorities for
>information about an entity.
>
>If the information is objective (definitive) then having a single source has
>advantages as pointed out by Stephen. If the information is subjective
>(non-definitive) then there should be the possibility for many sources for
>information, for example regarding curriculum use, expressing views in other
>languages etc.
>
>In other words to argue that it is possible to have, or even that there
>should ideally be, a single source (one giant metadata aggregation) for an
>entity is both naive and un-democratic.
>(I do not think that is Stephen's real intention but he did write " there is
>one and only one location that would constitute the source of information
>about this person")
--
Simon Grant http://www.simongrant.org/home.html
Information Systems Strategist http://www.inst.co.uk/
Please continue to use my established e-mail address
a (just by itself) (at) simongrant.org
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