Re: [Handle-info] Service Typing of Handle Values

[Eric Auer <eric.auer@mpi.nl>]

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Hi Tony,

> [no] inferencing [...], just trying to do a dead simple thing.
> A simple declaration of handle value relationships.
> 
> Given two URLs, say, how does one distinguish between them? If presented to
> a user they would need (at minimum) labels to differentiate them. (Shouldn't
> expect users to be able to make any sense of the URI strings themselves...)
> So, if we then have 2 URLs and 2 labels how do we associate each with the
> other. That's what the handle map was intended to do with URIs and text
> labels stoired in separate handle values. It's sort of similar to what Sean
> has but he has it internalized into a single data structure and for a
> particular use case.

The only way in a "classic" Handle System would be to
distinguish the URLs by their index. Each type/value
pair has one... So it might make sense to have some
per-namespace/prefix service which can "recommend"
a preferred index for a given realm and a given set
of selections from the user. One example...: The user
could ask the service for a good prefix for URLs for
MPI handles for users in France, and the service may
reply "try index 5001, then 5002, then any". Then the
browser of the user (or some service) could use the
information returned by the "proxy-ish recommendation
service" to make a pick among the set of URLs it gets
when it asks the Handle System for values of type URL
for the handle hdl:MPI/someresourcenumber :-). Actually
there could also be some interface / query style which
lets the Handle System server do all of this on the
server side, but the idea stays the same... :-).

Labelled URLs (and other data types) are also a nice
idea. Sometimes it is good to have some sort of name
value pair storage. One could either use a free form
type string (maybe hard for queries?) or a complex,
for example XML, data string to store data tuples.

I guess for some tasks name value pairs are better,
for others type index pairs and for yet other some
more "server calculated" type of processing...

Eric

PS: The "proxy-ish recommendation service" could be
something completely static, for example a chunk of
data stored at 0.NA/MPI or a similar location, but
it could also be something which calculates. Or some
machine readable rule for calculating things on the
server or client side. Anything which works will do.

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