[Zope-dev] Re: ZCatalog and Unique IDs

[Chris Withers]

Tres Seaver wrote:
> > who's the CTO?
> 
> Jim is.

Okay, I get the joke now :-)

>  * "persistent" references are effectively required to be immortal:
>     it is _mandated_ that one be able to stringify the IOR, copy it
>    to a piece of paper, put the paper in a bottle, and cast it on
>    the waves;  whoever opens the bottle should be able to transcribe
>    the IOR, reify the reference from the string, and communicate with
>    the object (which may be an entirely new "incarnation" created
>    just for this request).

This is the sort of persistent reference I meant, it's one of the
reasons I like CORBA as a model ;-)

> A general-purpose, persistable reference in Zope pretty much has to
> be represented as an absolute containment path

I don't agree. What happens when you move an object? The object doesn't
change so why should its persistent reference? In a similar way, what
happens when an object moves between storages? I reckon it should have
the same POID...

> A man with one watch knows what time it is;  A man with two is never sure.

That's not quite what I meant... An object is unique. It's aquisition
context may give it more attributes to play with, but at the end of the
day it is a seperate entity. This entity should have a unique, global
identifier; it's POID.

I think putting a path in front of this identifies the context, but
doesn't really do a lot to identify the object.

I guess my view depends on _data_ being stored in the object rather than
acquired. Is this the case?

cheers,

Chris