Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/urn/urn-archives/urn-ietf.archive.9704/000000_owner-urn-ietf _Wed Apr 2 11:29:34 1997.msg

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Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 18:28:20 +0200 (MET DST)
From: "Martin J. Duerst" <[e-mail]>
To: Dan Connolly <[e-mail]>
Cc: Cecilia Preston <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [URN] draft Bibliographic Identifiers to URNs
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On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Dan Connolly wrote:

> Cecilia Preston wrote:
> > >> Example: URN:ISBN:0-395-36341-1
> ...
> > >Since ISBNs are hierarchical, ISBN:/0/395/36341/1 would
> > >make more sense.
> > >
> >
> > You are imposing your hierarchical
> >path name model into a space that is
> > defined by community to have hyphens and had done so since the mid 1960's.
> >
> > Furthermore it is not up to the URN community to direct the use of that
> > part of the space, that is up to the Namespace ID.  Please remember that
> > this document is intended to illustrate how existing namespaces schemes can
> > work within the URN syntax.
>
> Hmm... I can see the social benefits of using the syntax
> that the community is familiar with.
>
> But do you see the technical benefits of exploiting the
> URI hierarchy syntax? It allows the use of relative
> URLs. It remains to be seen whether they would be used
> in the ISBN context as much as they are in the http:
> and ftp: contexts. But the technical benefit is there.

In the context of ISBNs, relative URLs will rarely appear.
Even if we could get rid of the checksum digit problem,
the case where all URLs in a document refer to books by
the same publisher are rare. And I still don't see the
technical benefits. It seems that you (and others) have
scalability in mind. Well, if you use something such as
NAPTR, it is as easy to get "contact a server in Japan
for all ISBNs starting with a '4'" whether the delimiter
is a '/' or a '-'. The same again if you have a prefix
such as 0-201- (Addison-Wesley), on the next level.
It also does not inhibit you to reuse information
obtained in previous NAPTR requests if you still have
it around.

There may be multiple hierarchies, such as conceptual
hierarchy, resolution hierarchy (different for various
resolution services),... Assuming their identity with
a single and fixed hierarchy delimiter may be rather
contraproductive.


Regards,    Martin.