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by James Robertson.
Original Post: So about that new syndication/posting format...
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An identifier that uniquely identifies the post on the web. Again, that needs some clarification. If you write a weblog entry about a story in the NYTimes, and post it to your weblog under two categories, the post-id will be the same regardless of which category it is published in. Also, the post-id is unique among all the Echo entries ever published, by anyone on the web, for all time. Once an item is published, it's post-id never changes. If you edit your entry, the post-id does not change. If you re-categorize your post, it does not change. Unique across space and time. What if you want to include some link to the source material? That is another Echo tag, possibly in another Echo optional module, that allows for citing multiple sources
Unique across the entire web, for all time? How, pray tell, is that going to happen? Is there going to be a central repository of serial numbers used for these, so that we can guarantee global uniqueness? Because if not, I fail to see how we can absolutely guarantee across source global uniqueness. A site level URI pointing to a given item might work - but it will end up being mostly useless if the site owner has to relocate the posts into a new CMS or to a new site entirely. Heck, say you publish - as I do - a blog from a Product Management perspective. Now say that BigCo, Inc. buys the product from SmallerCo., Inc. Do you think BigCo. will be happy with all those references to the old company lying around? Probably not, and they will probably want them changed. So much for the permanence of the ID.
It's a nice theory, but I don't think it's entirely workable. The RSS GUID set out to be the same thing, and it hasn't worked out that way either.
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