[Open-bio-l] LSIDs

[Brian King]

> 
> These IDs aren't really identifying any single piece
> of data -- they are metadata themselves, telling a
> client
> about how to parse a stream.  Closest analogy might
> be
> a MIME type.  Is this usage incompatible with the
> LSID
> spec?  If so, we should maybe define format
> identifiers in
> another namespace instead
> 
>      URN:format:open-bio.org:fasta?alphabet=DNA

OK.  I think identifying formats with URNs is a good
idea,  but also that the format names should be in a
different namespace than "lsid", as you mention.  One
reason for a different namespace is that the "lsid"
identifier is associated with a data resolution
process.  An example of using URNs to name something
other than data is the OASIS organization's
registration of the "oasis" URN namespace to identify
XML namespaces.  So their XML namespace names look
like "urn:oasis:....." rather that the HTTP URIs that
people usually use.  I'm told a shortcut to actually
registering a namespace is to use "public identifier"
URNs per IETF RFC 3151, but I haven't looked into it
myself.  Ideally each organization would name its
format using a common convention, but I suppose
putting the known formats in an "open-bio" namespace
is as good a start as any.

Regards,
Brian