Some authentication plugins use the "netid" to identify a user with an eperson. Come to think of it, this is an ongoing source of complexity when dealing with eperson records: a given eperson might have non-null values for one or the other or, I suppose, both. It would simplify things a bit if we had a single eperson attribute which serves as the unique identifier and has no other function.
The temptation to use email address as UID is strong, because it is (a) unique, (b) personal, and in the vast majority of cases (c) wanted anyway.* It has the added attraction that, because it is unique, the user can provide it without trial and error. As you point out, it has the disadvantage that the binding between address and user is subject to change as a result of outside influences. Saving one column by overloading another is often false economy. The other common approach is to have the user make up a username and then tell him that someone else already has that one. This yields a mildly negative user experience. I would not like to see DSpace do this. Then there's an approach that I hardly ever see: collect profile information, look up the email address as a check for duplication, and then respond, "you are number six." I would suggest that this is the simplest and best approach, except that some people take exception to being issued an identifying number by a machine. (I don't -- last time I checked, there were three other people in my home town named Mark Wood, and one even shares my middle initial; but that number is MINE.) --------------- * These would seem to be the same observations which mislead some people in the US to conclude that the Social Security Number would be a handy source of unique personal identifiers, even though their business' threat model is vastly different from the one faced by the SSA. -- Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer [email protected] Balance your desire for bells and whistles with the reality that only a little more than 2 percent of world population has broadband. -- Ledford and Tyler, _Google Analytics 2.0_
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