Brain dump #2 - zope and grids and GUID's

[Ulf Wiger]

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, Vlad Dumitrescu (EAW) wrote:

>Another thought: Isn't more interesting when searching to
>refer to the content of the document? I rather not try to
>remeber my latest project specification is called
>guid://machine.org/2003-01-31/45 :-) When there are many
>documents, these readable ids become just as meaningless
>pointers as "weird" ones, thus mostly for machine use. We
>humans will use a directory/cataloging system anyway, I
>think.

I agree. I finally gave up on the idea of having
"descriptive" GUIDs. Many will even argue that you should
*strive* for meaningless identifiers (i.e. having no
meaning other than that of uniquely identifying the object).

I would suggest that having readable identifiers is still a
good thing, if it can be done (and I believe it can). In
your example above, you may not want to rely on remembering
that your document had guid://machine.org/2003-01-31/45, but
once you've located the document through other means, this
guid may still ring some bells...

One still needs a cataloguing system, as you point out.

/Uffe
-- 
Ulf Wiger, Senior Specialist,
   / / /   Architecture & Design of Carrier-Class Software
  / / /    Strategic Product & System Management
 / / /     Ericsson AB, Connectivity and Control Nodes