[urn] the UUID namespace

Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> Fri, 09 September 2011 17:07 UTC

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Date: Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:09:19 -0600
From: Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im>
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Cc: rsalz@datapower.com, paulle@microsoft.com
Subject: [urn] the UUID namespace
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I like UUIDs, for the reasons described in RFC 4122:

   One of the main reasons for using UUIDs is that no centralized
   authority is required to administer them.... As a result, generation
   on demand can be completely automated, and used for a variety of
   purposes.

However, RFC 4122 is a case of "one of these things is not like the
other". Every other formal namespace involves active management of the
URN assignment process, in accordance with RFC 3406. By contrast, URNs
in the urn:uuid: namespace are assigned without any management:

   The UUID generation algorithm described here supports very
   high allocation rates of up to 10 million per second per machine if
   necessary, so that they could even be used as transaction IDs....
   The unique ability to generate a new UUID without a registration
   process allows for UUIDs to be one of the URNs with the lowest
   minting cost.

Therefore it seems to me that, handy as UUIDs are, they don't deserve to
be URNs. Indeed, the existence of the urn:uuid: namespace causes
confusion because we periodically hear about people who want to register
formal namespaces for things like SHA hashes. I propose that it would be
proper and beneficial to publish an RFC that defines UUIDs without the
URN namespace (perhaps with a URI scheme instead) and that therefore
obsoletes RFC 4122 and declares it to be historic.

Thoughts?

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

[urn] the UUID namespace Peter Saint-Andre
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Ted Hardie
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Peter Saint-Andre
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Ted Hardie
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Peter Saint-Andre
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Martin J. Dürst
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Peter Saint-Andre
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Juha Hakala
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Michael A Dolan
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Michael A Dolan
Re: [urn] the UUID namespace Larry Masinter