Re: [mmox] Global Object Identification

[Mike Dickson <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 2009-07-07 at 16:23 +0000, Jon Watte wrote:
> Tommi Laukkanen wrote:
> > they sold as long as needed. This could be worked a round by creating
> > specific identify provider service domains so that the domain name
> > would not reflect ownership but just the identity provider.
> >   
> 
> ... Which is more or less what the Handle system does ...
> And round and round we go :-)

Indeed :-)

It seems to me the key issue is one of requirements.  If you believe
that global asset identifiers require stable ids that are persistent
over time, then you'll likely lean to handles or inventing something
similar.  That extra capability has costs associated with it, however
it's achieved.

I personally think the stable id thing is important.  One reason that
haven't seen discussed is the ability to support different sorts of
access to the data being referenced.  If I'm a content developer I may
want a way to know that an object is an original versus a copy. That is,
since you can provide some control over how assets in the handle repo
get updated you can insure to some degree that the handle references the
real thing and not a copy someone made.  There are other ways to insure
that of course (watermarks, etc).  It's a use case though that I think
needs to be explored when deciding what mechanism to use to refer to
assets.

Mike