Handle System - Design Principles

Design Principles

The Handle system is designed to meet the following requirements to contribute to persistence

The identifier string:

• is not based on any changeable attributes of the entity (location, ownership, or any other attribute that may change without changing the referent’s identity);
• is opaque (preferably a ‘dumb number’: a well known pattern invites assumptions that may be misleading, and meaningful semantics may not translate across languages and may cause trademark conflicts);
• is unique within the system (to avoid collisions and referential uncertainty);
• has optional, but nice to have, features that should be supported (human-readable,cut-and-paste-able, embeddable; fits common systems, e.g., URI specification).

The identifier resolution mechanism:

• is reliable (using redundancy, no single points of failure, and fast enough to not appear broken);
• is scalable (higher loads simply managed with more computers);
• is flexible (can adapt to changing computing environments; useful to new applications):
• is trusted (both resolution and administration have technical trust methods; an operating organization is committed to the long term);
• builds on open architecture (encouraging the leverage efforts of a community in building applications on the infrastructure);
• is transparent (users need not know the infrastructure details).