Hi Chris It¹s not the size or form of your ID that matters, it is what you do with it that counts ;-)
For UUIDs, UMIDs or URLs, you need a common understanding of what happens to them in inevitable change. I think of one use for a URL as a reference to a location where content can be expected to change, such as a news service home page, whereas I consider a UUID is immutable, it refers to one item of content for ever. Create a new version of the content and you have to create a new ID. However, this is a way of thinking and true for most ID schemes ... it all depends on how you choose to manage your identifiers. My excursion into the world of AAF has taught me a lot about comprehensive techniques for structuring and managing IDs for, and relationships between, all kinds of different media material. Most of what AAF is about is structural metadata, how one thing relates to another in a package, along a timeline, encoded with a particular codec etc.. This allows you to trace relationships between content through its various authoring stages back to its original source, a kind of super edit decision list. Structural metadata can be enhanced with descriptive metadata, normally using a schema of your own choosing as there is limited agreement between organisations about what this should be. So to build and expose your EverythingBrainz, perhaps what is needed is an API for exploring structural relationships between items of content, perhaps based on UUIDs, and an API for searching on descriptive metadata (actors, locations, scripts, awards) that may return results including related UUIDs? These APIs could be WSDL or ReSTful in style. For example, I personally think the musicbrainz example should be a location where you find out information about ³Blur² ... http://musixbrainz.org/artist/blur Where an item is currently published is really an item of descriptive metadata. Every generation of the page should have its own ID within a content management system and the published URL refers to the currently published version. The API I propose would allow you to find out the ID of the currently published version and, with appropriate permissions, to explore previous versions of the page via ID relationships. UUID, URL, maiden name, doesn¹t matter as long as the relationships are consistent. In summary, I believe that you could use many different ID schemes and many different descriptive metadata schemas. The important things are: understanding relationships between IDs are how they managed over time; how to map between the ontologies of the various different descriptive schema. Within an organisation such as the BBC, maybe what is most important in the first instance is a common set of principles for managing and publishing IDs rather than a one size fits all system? Cheers, Richard On 4/3/08 23:17, "Chris Sizemore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > cool stuff richard. > > so how do/should we expose GUIDs to the outside world, in a sorta "Web" kind > of way? cause it's not enough to just generate unique IDs internally, we also > have to "broadcast" their, um, "meaning" to the world at large... > > in other words, seems like you need the ID, some metadata to describe the > thing ID'd, and a publishing/broadcasting mechanism so that other > people/systems know you have info to communicate. > > a la: > > http://musicbrainz.org/artist/ba853904-ae25-4ebb-89d6-c44cfbd71bd2.html > > sounds like the Web to me... and MusicBrainz, for instance, is an example of > all of the above, no? > > but now, don't we need an EverythingBrainz (as a colleague of mine recently > put it)? > > (BTW, i'm a person that feels that URLs, by definition, are GUIDs) > > > best-- > > --cs > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Richard Cartwright > Sent: Tue 3/4/2008 5:31 PM > To: BBC Backstage > Subject: Re: [backstage] What would you love to see coming out of BBC Vision > in the near future? > > Chris > > I¹ve a lot of recent experience with 16-byte UUIDs for identifying content > (RFC 4122) and the slightly more media-savy 32-byte Unique Material > Identification (UMID) from SMPTE (SMPTE 330M). Both standards are the basis > for the Advanced Authoring Format, an industry standard used by video > production tools from companies such as Avid and Quantel, and the related > Material Exchange Format (MXF) used for production material interchange and > now supported by a number of broadcast quality cameras, transcoders etc.. > > UUIDs are also known as GUIDs and are common to Microsoft Windows OS. Many > unix OSs have a ³uuidgen² command to create UUIDs. Java has a > ³java.util.UUID² class for generating and representing UUIDs. UUIDs are very > well supported and have been the subject of some interesting security issues > as without careful use they can expose your host ids outside your network. > > I am working on a media-specific Java API for AAF and MXF that includes > support for UUIDs and UMIDs. Both can be generated at source and, as long as > a consistent generation strategy is used, should be globally unique. > > Richard > > On 4/3/08 12:40, "Chris Sizemore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> > anyone got any thoughts or experiences with the "UUID system for uniquely >> > identifying objects" mentioned below? in our collective opinion and >> > experience, is there anything like that, or close to that, in existence >> yet? > > > -- > Dr Richard Cartwright > media systems architect > portability4media.com > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > mobile +44 (0)7792 799930 > > > -- Dr Richard Cartwright media systems architect portability4media.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] mobile +44 (0)7792 799930
