[Ietf-not43] address issues

[Eric A. Hall]

on 8/22/2003 11:53 AM hardie at qualcomm.com wrote:

> we need to be very careful to separate the identifiers used for
> distributed lookups from the data itself.  That will give us added
> flexibility to handle the different types of relationships which may
> pertain between objects over times.

Abstracting things like part numbers sepate from the parts themselves is
certainly an important principle in database design. On the other hand,
abstracting social-security numbers in a database of SSNs is usually
counter-productive. Addressing data falls into the latter camp, I think,
just like domain names are self-referential to the point where DNS
benefits from using them as the key values.

While we're on the subject of abstracting identifiers, I was going to make
the point that netblocks make better identifiers because they are
provider-independent, but that's not always going to be true. While it is
true that netblocks can easily move between providers (or more likely,
between operators within a provider's realm), the same is also true for
ranges albeit it less likely. Both identifiers can be bought/sold in the
scope of where such transfers are allowed.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/