>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Wilkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Mark> WSDL is a widely accepted W3C spec that is becoming increasingly accepted Mark> worldwide (and is, generally, automatically generated based on your Mark> interface, so requires little or no manual construction), and which solves a Mark> problem that we *know without any doubt* URLs cannot solve. I really don't Mark> see an advantage in trying to ignore them, circumvent them, or otherwise Mark> relegate them to a secondary lookup, in the base spec for the Semantic Web, Mark> when we know that we are going to have to deal with them at some point I think that I agree. The LSID use of web services should not really be seen as a problem. Push comes to shove, even this part could be replaced or made option if a REST style solution where desired. >From my perspective, the thing that worries me about this whole discussion is >that we seem to be retreading old paths. The LSID standard first raised it's head many 5 or so years ago. And we still appear to be talking about basic technology here; ultimately, there are still some really big biological issues to be dealt with wrt to identifiers. The biggest barrier, however, is that of community uptake. Ultimately the differences between LSIDs (a two step resolution to provide persistence, location independence and some other stuff) and PURLs (a two step resolution, etc...) are not that important. Technology churn will prevent community uptake faster than almost anything however. I have a solution: I am going to use the wonders of the semantic web to describe all of these different identifiers that we have invented so far and all those we will invent in the future. Now, what identifiers should I use in the ontology? Phil