RDS/WIP Identifier Generator

There has long been a need for an identifier generator in this project, and so we now have an experimental one.

Features

• Allocates identifiers in a given name space (you supply the base URI).
• All identifiers are stored in their name space in a single triplestore.
• All identifiers have the form RNNNNNN where NNNNNN are digits and R is literal.
• NNNNNN will never start with a zero.
• NNNNNN will never contain a sequence NNN of three of the same digits.
• NNNNNN will never contain any digit more than three times.
• Results in 862407 possible identifiers from R100000 to R999999.
• NNNNNN is allocated with a strong random number generator (PRNG seeded from an RNG).
• There is intentionally no support for allocating "sequences" of identifiers.
• There is intentionally no support for allocating "bulk" identifiers.
• Uses HTTP CGI GET for operations and XML for results.

Principles

• No one can choose their identifier.
• No one can inadvertently create implicit knowledge by "owning" a block of identifiers - knowledge should be explicit, reservation blocks denied.
• No one can create "de facto" maps by allocating sequences that relate to other existing identifiers (again, to avoid creating implicit knowledge).
• Identifiers are of the same length (at least until "slots" become too sparse to find quickly, which will likely happen when its about 80% full).
• Supports machine interfacing.

Governance

• Any abuse of the system (ie. trying to circumvent the principles) should result in suspension of the service for the offending user and revocation of the abusing allocations.

Agenda

• Need to apply authentication/authorization (very quick to do).
• Need to decide on a registry namespace & properties.
• Need to decide if we record the allocater's user id and date.