Andy,
Thanks for taking responsibility for this important work. Overall, I think
it is a terrific contribution.
I have a few comments of a minor nature.
1. In answer to the question "Should ... W3C Tag thinking" be referenced, I
am inclined to say yes. The downside is that this is the sort of temporal
issue that will have to be revised at a later date as these things either
become common practice or fail to. But there are several issues in the
document for which that is true, and it is unavoidable in a domain such as
identifiers, where change continues apace. So, overall, reference to TAG
recommendations seems to strengthen the case.
2. The admonition that "URI references should resolve to human and/or
machine-readable descriptions" seems redundant in the first place (are there
other than these two alternatives?), and continues to leave us in the same
fence-sitting position that DCMI has suffered from for too long. What do we
really want? One? the other? both? And how is it to be specified? Without
nailing this down, reference-by-vagueness seems likely to be perpetuated.
Anyone have a more concrete proposal?
3. The admonition in (2.) also would seem to be in conflict with the
recommendation later in the piece concerning "info" identifiers, as *any*
resolution of "info" identifiers is not guaranteed.
4. Your definition of 'persistent' is pretty close. However, since there is
little agreement about what constitutes the Internet even now, I am
wondering if it might be more precise to refer to the life of the URI naming
architecture instead? Possibly still too vague, but how about something
like:
<begin suggested alternate wording>
All XML namespace and term URI references should be assigned with the
intention that they will persist for the duration of the URI naming
conventions that provide the foundation for Internet protocols. It is
recognized that active management and support of such identifiers will
persist only as long as the business processes which motivate them, however
implementers are cautioned to adopt identifier systems with public policies
that support non-reassignment of identifiers and public committment
statements concerning longevity.
<end suggested alternate wording>
The reference to uniqueness seems redundant, as any URI is guaranteed
unique?
5. The statement in the "info" URI section that "they can be looked-up in
the "info" URI registry" is perhaps overstating the case. The "info"
specification does not guarantee any resolution, though it is expected that
there will be resolution mechanisms accessible through the registry in cases
where it would be useful for this to happen (terminology services are a very
good example).
6. I consider none of my comments as show-stoppers, and accomodating them is
entirely at the discretion of the author as far as I'm concerned.
Great job, Andy
stu
-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Powell [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2004 5:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [DC-ARCHITECTURE] Guidelines for assigning identifiers to
metadata terms
I took an action at the last meeting of the DCMI Usage Board to write up
some guidelines for assigning identifiers to metadata terms.
The current DCMI encoding guidelines and the draft abstract model require
that all terms (DCMI terms and others) are assigned URI references before
they can be used in metadata application profiles. This document attempts
to provide some guidance about how to assign such identifiers.
See:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcmi/term-identifier-guidelines/
There are some specific questions in italics, though I'm sure you'll have
more!
Comments?
Andy
--
Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell +44 1225 383933
Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
ECDL 2004, Bath, UK - 12-17 Sept 2004 - http://www.ecdl2004.org/
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