Ask HN: Why are URNs not more popular? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why are URNs not more popular?

#61

Post by lolive » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

hobofan wrote: post #26

layer8 wrote: post #19

There is only a marginal benefit in using " urn:foo:... " over " foo:... ", namely making it clear that it is only intended to represent a name and not a locator. That benefit is marginal because without knowing the spec for foo , you can't really do much with the knowledge that it is a URN. Without knowing the spec, you can't even compare URN values to check if they represent the same name (e.g. ISBN URNs may or may…

I think this probably covers it the best. In terms of the semantic web, trying to semantically interpret the URN (as OP suggests) also seem like a conceptual mismatch, as there are other mechanisms that allow for the same thing in a more "robust" way. E.g. in RDF one could pack all the semantics into the datatype of a literal like `Norwegian account number "12345678902"` -> "12345678902"^^ http://example.com/accountN…

We have such interrogations for our data strategy, at work. Can you drop me a message for further discussion? (@Datao on Twitter, or datao@datao.net)

Re: Ask HN: Why are URNs not more popular?

#62

Post by tokinonagare » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 7:19 PM UTC

>Why are strings not more popular?

It's probably the most popular data type out there, both in data and in codebases. URNs don't bring a lot more than strings on the table, so people go to the easy route.

Re: Ask HN: Why are URNs not more popular?

#63

Post by slim » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 7:19 PM UTC

RFC2141 just defines a way to make ids in a non conflicting way. you don't need to use one of the registered namespaces to use URN, you can make up your own and you don't need to register them for them to be useful. at my company we use urn:l6: namespace (company name is L6) whenever we need ids. it very useful especially when you use barcodes, rfid, etc..

Re: Ask HN: Why are URNs not more popular?

#64

Post by karmakaze » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 7:58 PM UTC

dagss wrote: post #31

karmakaze wrote: post #5

Why restrict to URN when you can use a URI that looks similar to a URL but doesn't have to be accessible. I've used URIs for partner supplied identifiers. They're also used with GraphQL as resource ids. For widely standardized things URNs make complete sense e.g. ISBN for books.

Well I want to refer to things that are widely standardized within countries: Business registration numbers and bank account numbers. However when you go international, how should you refer to "business registration number in Norway"? Perhaps you encode that as "NO" but then you hit Denmark which has not 1 but 5 business registries.... The ONLY thing missing is really a standard way to refer to "the registry in which…

So URIs are almost the opposite. If you think of the 'path' as the thing being registered, then the hostname part (which aren't resolvable hosts but can follow domain ownership convention) is where it's registered. (Could also use up to a common path prefix.) What we don't have are standards for the 'path' parts for various usages.