[Opensim-dev] Global identifiers

[Zonja Capalini]

I see one small problem with this approach: UUIDs are immutable,
but it's conceivable that a world operator could allow certain form of
updating of user names, while still retaining the same identity
(I've had to manually edit user names in some cases in the worlds
I administer, for a number of reasons).

In this scenario, if an URI is resolved to a name that has changed
this can potentially require a lot of updates in the database
(e.g., if the foreign user has created many objects in the local world).

OTOH, if the URI -> username association is stored in a different table,
this table can also keep other, valuable, information, for example the
date of the latest resolution, whether the world appears to be active atm,
etc.

  /Zonja

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote:

> We should.
>
> Also, we should use extra info in the URI. Reson:
>
> http://www.avination.net:8004/user/44626b40-13d6-4817-b61b-de5df7b5e7e8
>
> The above is totally meaningless. It can't be used to do anything
> with unless www.avination.net exists and points to a gatekeeper.
>
> However,
>
>
> http://www.avination.net/user/44626b40-13d6-4817-b61b-de5df7b5e7e8/Melanie+Milland
>
> makes more sense here.
>
> The URI itself provides a "Display name" that the resolver at that
> URL can treat as extra path info and ignore, if it chooses.
>
> This would allow us to create a temporary memory cache record of the
> UUID -> name mapping that would let us display a prim creator
> without a lookup, which is a potentially frequent process.
>
> The sim can take the URL at face value and diassemble it, using
> 44626b40-13d6-4817-b61b-de5df7b5e7e8 -> "Melanie
> Milland at www.avination.net" for the cache and returning that to the
> viewer as the creator, all without a lookup.
>
> While this doesn't prevent verification of stale URI's from failing,
> it does allow to display a meaningful text if that happens.
>
> Melanie
>
> diva at metaverseink.com wrote:
> > Looks like ppl are reading more into this discussion than I intended.
> >
> > The hypergrid is up & running with all authentication and security in
> > place, and so are exchanges of content via HG and archives. What's
> > missing is *systematic* global identification of resources. OpenSim
> > already does that internally for resolving *certain* identifiers on the
> > Hypergrid, but nothing is stored persistently yet. That is going to
> > change soon, because 1) I want to make friends & IM work across the HG
> > (so, for example, your foreign friend needs to be identified by a global
> > ID); and 2) we really need to fix the b0rked "creator" field in
> OARs/IARs.
> >
> > This means that we need to write URIs persistently, both in certain
> > fields of the DB (which is already prepared for what's coming) and in
> > the archives.
> >
> > So the issue here is really narrow. Assuming everyone agrees that we
> > should use URIs, should we add type information in the URI or not? Any
> > other thoughts on the *form* of these URIs?
> >
> >
> > mysticaldemina at xrgrid.com wrote:
> >> May be good to share what your use case is.  As universal are you
> suggesting
> >> an identifier that separate, potentially un-trusted domains, would use
> to
> >> identify the same person?
> >>
> >> Is so I don't think you can do that with two parties, you need at least
> one
> >> more party to validate that they are the same person, like how we do
> with
> >> SSL certificates, or with some kind of authentication, like you send me
> an
> >> email address which gets me to a profile, but I still need to enter in a
> >> password or something to get access to that profile.
> >>
> >> M.
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de
> >> [mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de] On Behalf Of Ai Austin
> >> Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 4:59 PM
> >> To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> >> Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] Global identifiers
> >>
> >> diva wrote:
> >>> I'm about to introduce global identifiers, so that I can make friends
> >>> and IM work on the hypergrid, and would like feedback on the best form
> >>> of these identifiers.
> >>
> >>> Here are some options:
> >>> ... Thoughts?
> >>
> >>
> >> A couple of thoughts and observations Diva...
> >>
> >> Could the taxonomy of "types" you use cause problems if the chosen
> >> 1-1 mapping for a UUID is not felt to work well i future.
> >>
> >> "user" is also perhaps a different notion to a specific "avatar"
> >>
> >> It would be nice if any UUID in a URI you use can be resolved (e.g.
> >> to the avatar name) by any host that has the mapping (like the
> >> distributed nature of DNS works), so its not dependent on the host
> >> continuing to exist, or to be up at the time information on the
> >> avatar is sought.
> >>
> >> AS an example, we have shifted our data bases between machines and
> >> have done so 3 or 4 times since we started running OpenSim, carrying
> >> the UUIDs of avatars (and the UIIDs of regions we use) forwards to
> >> the new data bases.
> >>
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