On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 09:57:03AM +0100, Graham Triggs wrote: > From: "James Rutherford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >This is, in my humble opinion, pure evil. How can you consider something > >to be an *identifier* if you can't actually guarantee that it identifies > >something? > > I absolutely agree. But how can you guarantee that it resolves to what it > is meant to be identifying if you completely disallow the possibility to > reassign it?
I'd flip this around and say how can you guarantee that it resolves to what it is meant to be identifying if you *do* allow the possibility to reassign it. Oh, what a can of worms! > I was tempted to say that you shouldn't be allowed to delete a file that > has an external identifier (or at least that the default implementation > shouldn't). As soon as I realised that wouldn't be possible, you have to > consider the possibility of reassigning the handle. This isn't actually strictly true. Once we have versioning, it could well be impossible (presumably at the discretion of the repository curator) to delete *anything*, only to be able to create a new "head" version of the container that doesn't hold any reference to the file you wanted to delete. Remember that in systems with versioning, deletion is a very different concept to systems where versioning isn't supported. The points I have made so far assume we are working with a system that supports versioning. > Remember, that such a reassignment is (or rather should only be used for) > altering the resolution of the identifier - which doesn't automatically > mean that you are conceptually changing what it identifies. Danger danger! Surely we would just be giving our adopters enough rope with which to hang themselves by doing this. It is pretty obvious that people will never use things the way we've decided that they should, no matter how much we jump up and down and tell them that it's the wrong thing to do. cheers, Jim -- James Rutherford | Hewlett-Packard Limited registered Office: Research Engineer | Cain Road, HP Labs | Bracknell, Bristol, UK | Berks +44 117 312 7066 | RG12 1HN. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Registered No: 690597 England The contents of this message and any attachments to it are confidential and may be legally privileged. If you have received this message in error, you should delete it from your system immediately and advise the sender. To any recipient of this message within HP, unless otherwise stated you should consider this message and attachments as "HP CONFIDENTIAL". ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ DSpace-tech mailing list DSpace-tech@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-tech
