Rob,

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Sanderson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 23 May 2003 13:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Metaresponse


>> a position in a resultset. The recordid should become part of the
>> SRU/SRW specifications as request parameter and in the SRU/SRW response.
>A) What if the record doesn't have a unique persistant id?
I am thinking of the records being useful web resources - which means some
level of persistence in the URI, but the higher the better. OK it may be
possible for some sets of records not to have persistent URIs and their
"persistent" URI would be their position in a result set, but these would
probably not be useful web resources.

>B) Why not just use the existing mechanism of CQL?
...&query=identifier%="foo1"

...&query=identifier%="foo1" could be a persistent URI, though in some
services it might return more than one record.

Allowing any URI to identify a record allows for example the database query
URI to be different from the full record URI to the extent that they came
from totally separate servers, or of a different form e.g. an URN, NBN, DOI.


> C) As record metadata, it belongs with record metadata, however we handle
this.
I agree, record metadata would need to contain an element that meant "this
is the persistent URI for this record". I believe it would be better to
fetch records on the basis of this element rather than record x in result
set y.

Bill
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