[oslc-core] Proposal for new property oslc:shortId

[Arthur Ryman]

It is common practice for development tools to provide short, 
human-friendly identifiers for resources. For example, people working 
together on a project will refer to bugs by a number, e.g. "bug 42". The 
context of the identifier is implicitly understood by the people involved. 


At present, OSLC V2 [1] provides the following guidance for the use of 
dcterms:identifier: "A unique identifier for a resource. Typically 
read-only and assigned by the service provider when a resource is created. 
Not typically intended for end-user display."

DCMI [2] defines dcterms:identifier as: "An unambiguous reference to the 
resource within a given context."  Goes on to say in a Comment 
"Recommended best practice is to identify the resource by means of a 
string conforming to a formal identification system."

A formal identification system would be e.g. ISBN, URI, DOI or UUID. DMCI 
does not require it to be a URI [3].

dcterms:identifier therefore should not be used as a short, human-friendly 
identifier. 

Given that dcterms:identifier is not suitable, we need another property. I 
propose we define oslc:shortId and that it should have a plain text value. 
This value should be unique is some context that is apparent to human 
users of a service.

[1] - 
http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/OSLCCoreSpecAppendixA#Dublin_Core_Properties
[2] - http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-identifier
[3] - http://dublincore.org/architecturewiki/ResourceIdentifierGuidelines 

Regards, 
___________________________________________________________________________ 

Arthur Ryman 

DE, Chief Architect, Reporting &
Portfolio and Strategy Management
IBM Software, Rational 

Toronto Lab | +1-905-413-3077 (office) | +1-416-939-5063 (mobile)