Identifiers 2.0 Public RFC results

[Markus Demleitner]

Dear Alberto,

Thanks for being persistent here, because...

On Wed, Oct 07, 2015 at 11:24:49AM -0400, Accomazzi, Alberto wrote:
> "resolution," which in my mind is the simple process of mapping an
> identifier to one or more actionable addresses (typically http URLs).  This
> process can be enhanced to provide useful identifier metadata by the
> resolver using things such as content negotiation (see e.g.
> http://www.crosscite.org/cn/)
> 
> If we start calling all or most VO services "resolvers" of pubDIDs then the
> meaning of what a resolver does gets diluted to the point that one would
> not know what it means.  To me, SSA, Obscore, etc. are services that accept

...you are of course completely right.  So, here's my next offer
(volute rev. 3094); this, now, actually does mention the global
PubDID resolver, but a subtle hint that such a shameless plug has no
place in a recommendation will suffice to make me drop it.

  Note that by this specification publishers have no obligation to
  ensure continued access to datasets identified with PubDIDs. They
  are not by themselves persistent identifiers with guarantees on
  resolvability. Their main function is to provide globally unique
  identifiers for use in, e.g., federating responses from different
  services.

  Publishers are, however, encouraged to declare at least one
  capability of a protocol dealing with PubDIDs[2] in the resource
  record referenced by the Registry part of a PubDID (i.e., the URI in
  front of the first question mark). In that way, clients can attempt
  to retrieve data based on stand-alone PubDIDs by querying the
  Registry for the "embedding" resource and seeing if it supports any
  protocol they implement.

  The definition of a proper resolver or resolution strategy is beyond
  the scope of this standard. Although services prototyping such
  funtionality have been written[3], we maintain additional efforts are
  required outside of Registry to build a reliable infrastructure on
  top of PubDIDs.

with the footnotes

  [2] At the time of this writing, Datalink, Obscore, and SSA are
  IVOA recommended protocols allowing queries involving PubDIDs. SIA
  (Tody & Plante 2009) will, according to current proposed
  recommendations, have an analogous facility in version 2.0.

  [3] e.g., GAVO's global PubDID resolver at http://dc.g-vo.org/glopidir.

This now *almost* has a forward reference to future standards, but
I feel it's not really promising anything, and I hope it maintains
acceptable levels of terminological rigour.

Opinions?  Further suggestions for improvement?

Thanks,

        Markus