>> Would it make a difference to you if, instead of re-direction, the previous >> identifiers were included in the record itself? > > No. For purposes of a relational database I need an identifier that is unique > and exclusive.
You won't find it, except for single-point-in-time snapshots of data, which are not changed and do not interrelate with other datasets. Your schema will be fine as long as you don't fix errors in the data over time, and you don't attempt to allow others to interact with your data using your identifiers. You contend that OL id's aren't unique, because they can be merged when found to be redundant, giving two IDs for an entity, which is half true (there is still only one primary ID). But there simply is no way around that for real data with permanence over time. One could argue that Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens should not have been given different OL ID's because somebody should have known they were the same person. But the basic scenario is still valid. Even if you go with event-based identification, there will be situations where you epistemologically can't know whether John Smith, born 1793, is the same person as John Smith, flourished 1845, until/unless more information becomes available later. When it does, you are back to the same problem of needing to merge two entities, and somehow be able to refer to the new single entity. How do you plan to do that? - Alan _______________________________________________ Ol-tech mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
