![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/390e531f4f93461168de3b073b7cad07.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Feb 5, 2008 9:03 AM, Krzysztof Benedyczak <golbi@mat.uni.torun.pl> wrote:
Tom Scavo wrote:
Does anyone see a downside to such a naming scheme?
Well, I can't really see the reason for putting http:// there, and making it a URL. It'll confuse everybody, actually the above text confuses even my MUA - thuderbird - which allows me to click at those example attributes' values.
Yes, that's a minor annoyance with URL syntax, I suppose.
My and I think general view on URL is that it identifies a resource via a representation of its access mechanism - and it is not true in this case.
In another words, without very serious reason I wouldn't use http:// URLs for things that aren't by any mean resources accessible via HTTP protocol.
A URL need not be resolvable. SAML, for example, recommends URLs for entityIDs (which are formally required to be URIs).
Looking at the other end of your proposition - scoped attribute value encoded with '#':
<whatever>/gisolve.org/uiuc.edu/geog602#student
is nearly the same as my original proposition. My was:
/gisolve.org/uiuc.edu/geog602:student
I should have paid more attention, sorry. I believe we've independently come to more-or-less the same conclusion.
Valerio convinced me that it will be better to use the same notation that MACE profile defines (with '@').
That was my initial inclination as well, but I'm having second thoughts.
Parsing is trivial in any case. The only one tiny issue is to define which are reserved chars and how to escape them. Of course URI encoding rules with percent encoding of special characters is fine.
That's another reason for choosing URIs, the encoding is well defined.
Eventually one minor note: all those examples above should contain vo service id as the "host" component (see the rest of discussion - one service can manage many VOs). E.g.:
Good point.
To summarize: I don't think that a URL is a good choice, a URI is fine with me,
Okay, let me propose the following compromise: group://voservice.uiuc.edu/gisolve.org/uiuc.edu/geog602#student In the case where the voservice is irrelevant or unnecessary, this reduces to group:///gisolve.org/uiuc.edu/geog602#student In fact, the syntax is exactly the same as the well-known file: URIs. What do you think? Is this better?
however at least partial compatibility with MACE-dir is tempting too - that's why we proposed @ notation.
I think we should give this profile our best shot, and then I'd be happy to carry it forward to MACE-Dir for further discussion. Tom