On 7/10/07, Jukka Zitting <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi,
On 7/10/07, Tako Schotanus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I understand the recommendation, I just would like to add that
> sometimes finding a good identifier is pretty difficult. The example
> of using a person's email address is just not stable enough, there are
> lots of people who are changing email addresses continuously and many
> of the addresses don't contain any clue as to the person they belong
> to.
Note that names don't really need to be globally unique or stable. A
name doesn't even need to reflect any specific attribute (real name,
etc.) of the node.
I understand, they only need to be unique to their parent, but they
don't need to be stable? Then how are you going to reference them if,
like rule #5 says "references are considered harmful"? If you keep
changing them you need to keep updating all your references?
> And since the 1.5 years that I live in Spain now I'm still amazed at
> the number of people that have EXACTLY the same name! Even taking into
> account that they have 2 last names (from both parents) and normally
> several first names as well! (Probably due to the fact that it was
> customary to name children after grandparents)
This is where the recommendation to avoid huge flat collections comes
to help. A repository that models the population of Spain could (and
should!) use some hierarchy.
A geographic hierarchy would divide people based on the area, city,
street, block, etc. where they live in.
People move all the time.
But maybe I see this stability thing as something more important than
it really is, you I'll wait what your response to the above is :-)
Cheers,
-Tako
