Phillip Lord wrote:
As I understand it, there is a fail over mechanism. If uniprot.org falls over,
the first resolution step can be performed by an LSID server not at
uniprot.org. I can't remember exactly how this works, as I haven't read the
spec for ages.
As far as I can see, LSIDs are basically location independent. The only whole
I can see is if someone else buys uniprot.org, sets up an LSID resolution
service and then returns crap. purls have the same issue I think.
If you consider "domain name" is location, then http-URI is location
dependent. Otherwise, http-URI is location independent too. The issue
you raised is more about failover protection, which LSID is more
advantageous. But using redundancy to do fail over protection is not a
CHEAP operation (since we are talking about cost here). That is why the
approach is always used in mission-critical application. Personally, I
cannot think of any use cases are that kind of mission-critical to
warrant the effort.
Xiaoshu
