# Re: URN functional spec

Bruce Speyer (speyer@mcc.com)
Wed, 16 Feb 94 16:58:34 CST

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    Date: Wed, 16 Feb 94 16:58:34 CST

    From: speyer@mcc.com (Bruce Speyer)

    Message-Id: <9402162258.AA06044@faith.mcc.com>

    To: brennan@hal.com

    Subject: Re: URN functional spec

>From: brennan@hal.com (Dave Brennan)
>Date: Thu, 10 Feb 94 15:23:57 CST
>
>Here's an example of a URN-like value I'm using today: UQ3zf5B-BM9X3cS.
>The value itself tells me nothing about the document to which it refers,
>but all I have to do is feed it to the document browser software to view
>the thing to which it refers. IMHO, this is much better than something
>like "/usr/local/lib/doc/foo.txt," which although has more meaning to me
>as a human, is wide open to abuse. Even though the latter value needs
>resolving if we call it a URN, it is far too tempting for a user to go
>looking for the document as though it were in what looks like a path even
>though it may not be (or have never been) there.

Many a battle scar remains from the great Object IDentifiers (OIDs) wars
of the past few years ago while attempting to debug and fix a busted OO
systems, a gory mess of inconsistent state with nothing to go by except
totally unitelligable 32 and 64 character strings. Even worse, imagine
your customer attempting to debug that critical production system.

-spy

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