[Esip-preserve] On Earth Science Data File Uniqueness

[Bruce Barkstrom]

My argument is "where do you go to get metadata when
all you've got is an ID?"  UUID's are fine - but certainly don't
contain redirection addresses.  To paraphrase, "knowing that
this file is called 'Bob' doesn't tell me which family to call to
find out where I should return him, nor does it tell me what
format he's in."  So where do we get that.  In human terms,
where do we find his birth certificate?  This is kind of an inverse
to the problem "given an ID, where do I find a file?" which is the
locator use case problem.  This one is "I've got an ID and a file,
where do I go to find out about if if that's all I've got?"

Bruce B.

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Curt Tilmes <Curt.Tilmes at nasa.gov> wrote:

> On 02/09/11 10:14, Bruce Barkstrom wrote:
> > The question on my mind is sort of "If you come across a file with a
> > UUID, who produced it?"
>
> I agree, that is an important question and needs to be addressed, but
> UUID doesn't address it, nor was it intended to.
>
> > This isn't quite the same as the unique locator use case in the
> > paper, since the question isn't "which sources could provide me with
> > an authentic copy of a particular kind of file?"  It's more along
> > the line of "where did this fellow 'Bakak' come from?"
>
> Sure, but without the identifier, you would still have the question
> "where did this fellow come from?"  to which the response is "Who are
> you talking about?"
>
> The identifier at least allows you to refer to him by name..
>
> Is your argument that we SHOULD have good metadata (I agree), or that
> we SHOULD NOT assign UUIDs?
>
> Curt
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