CanonicalURI

Both in a GBIF network and in document-centric data Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) are required for many purposes. URI/IRIs are globally unique identifiers. To some extent (depending on the management procedures for resources, the expected lease time of the DNS entry, and on social or legal obligations governing the future use of institutional names being part of a DNS name) they can be considered permanent identifiers.

However, the nature of URIs provide numerous problems when using them for object comparison. This is very well discussed in Identifying Atom (Mark Pilgrim, August 18, 2004, http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/08/18/pilgrim.html).

One solution that the Atom standard has chosen, is to require data providers to support canonical URIs rather than expecting clients to perform canonicalization.

It seems desirable to require a similar behavior from GBIF/UBIF providers.

-- GregorHagedorn - 13 May 2006