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Back in 2007, I had a different job, different email address and lived in a different state. Things change. If people are sending emails to [log in to unmask] to fix the library web services, they are going to be sorely disappointed and should perhaps check http://www.library.gatech.edu/about/staff.php for updates. purl.org has been going through a massive architecture change for the better part of a year now -- which has finally been completed. It was a slightly messy transition but they migrated from their homegrown system to one designed by Zepheira. I feel like predicting the demise of HTTP and worrying about a services' ability to handle other protocols is unnecessary hand wringing. I still have a telephone (two, in fact). Both my cell phone and VOIP home phone are still able to communicate flawlessly with a POTS dial phone. My car still has an internal combustion engine based on petroleum. It still doesn't fly or even hover. My wall outlets still accept a plug made in the 1960s. PURLs themselves are perfectly compatible with protocols other than HTTP: http://purl.org/NET/rossfsinger/ftpexample The caveat being that the initial access point is provided via HTTP. But then again, so is http://hdl.handle.net/, which, in fact, the only way currently in practice to dereference handles. My point is, there's a lot of energy, resources and capital invested in HTTP. Even if it becomes completely obsolete, my guess I can still type "http://purl.org/dc/terms" in spdy://google.com/ and find something about what I'm looking for. -Ross. On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Han, Yan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Please explain in more details, that will be more helpful. > It has been a while. Back to 2007, I checked PURL's architecture, and it was straightly handling web addresses only. Of course, current HTTP protocol is not going to last forever, and there are other protocols in the Internet. The coverage of PURL is not enough. > From PURL's website, it still says " PURLs (Persistent Uniform Resource Locators) are Web addresses that act as permanent identifiers in the face of a dynamic and changing Web infrastructure." I am not sure what "web addresses" means. http://www.purl.org/docs/help.html#overview says " PURLs are Persistent Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). A URL is simply an address on the World Wide Web". We all know that "World Wide Web" is not "the Internet". What if info resource can be accessed through other Internet Protocols (FTP, VOIP, ....)? This is the limitation of PURL. > PURL is doing re-architecture, though I cannot find out more documentation. > The Handle system is " The Handle System is a general purpose distributed information system that provides efficient, extensible, and secure HDL identifier and resolution services for use on networks such as the Internet.". http://www.handle.net/index.html Notice the difference in definition. > > Yan > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ross Singer > Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8:11 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Assigning DOI for local content > > On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Han, Yan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> Currently DOI uses Handle (technology) with it social framework (i.e. administrative body to manage DOI). In technical sense, PURL is not going to last long. > > I'm not entirely sure what this is supposed to mean (re: purl), but > I'm pretty sure it's not true. > > I'm also pretty sure there's little to no direct connection between > purl and doi despite a superficial similarity in scope. > > -Ross. >