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Decide about fate of lsid.tdwg.org #60

Closed mdoering closed 7 years ago

mdoering commented 8 years ago

TDWG runs a currently non functional LSID resolver and has an active virtual host definition for http://lsid.tdwg.org https://github.com/tdwg/infrastructure/blob/master/vhosts/lsid.tdwg.org.conf

Can we simply remove that virtual host definition?

rdmpage commented 7 years ago

Anyway, is someone in a position to say "yes, let's set up a resolver" and make it happen?

MattBlissett commented 7 years ago

The richer client is fine, but I think it goes beyond what TDWG as a standards body should provide.

What do users expect when they resolve an LSID? It probably depends whether they're clicking a link in a paper, or knowingly went to the service to input the LSID.

IPNI provides a reasonable-looking stylesheet with their RDF: http://ipni.org/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:20012728-1:1.1 but I think they're the only one.

rdmpage commented 7 years ago

I guess this is a bigger discussion, but I don't think standards exist in isolation. If you want to see them used then you have to think about the ecosystem that will use them (ideally, that ecosystem was crying out for the standard to be developed, and will embrace it with open arms once it's developed). Simply saying "it's not our job" might make sense if you define TDWGs mission as "we make standards", but if you define a standard, encourage it's use, set up a resolver, then walk away, then you are as an organisation open to criticism that you've no clear vision or strategy, beyond "we make standards".

timrobertson100 commented 7 years ago

I will propose the following to the TDWG Exec for approval by the 16th of September for implementation on the 19th September by GBIF.

I believe this will satisfy a) the needs of the those clicking on old links in literature, b) the wish for TDWG to be clear about their position and c) a resolver that won't imply any specific organisation endorsement (i.e. GBIF don't need to consider that people may assume GBIF actively promote LSID).

MattBlissett commented 7 years ago

Hi all,

I've set up Rod's LSID resolver on http://www.lsid.info/, both as Rod provided, and with another version that ends with an HTTP redirect to the metadata.

Cyndy's example from earlier: http://lsid.tdwg.org/urn:lsid:biosci.ohio-state.edu:osuc_pubs:243 — this redirects to the machine readable version. (And the new URL is http://www.lsid.info/urn:lsid:biosci.ohio-state.edu:osuc_pubs:243 )

I think links to /summary pages used to go to a reformatted version: http://lsid.tdwg.org/summary/urn:lsid:nmbe.ch:spidersp:021946

The LSID queries are cached for a week, so the level of queries from this server should be very low.

Please review: http://www.lsid.info/

Note that error cases aren't handled well. I had to update some libraries for compatibility with the PHP & libraries used on the TDWG server, but left the error handling as it was -- in some cases it fails. For example, http://www.lsid.info/summary/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:apni.taxon:178722 fails because biodiversity.org.au doesn't publish a DNS SRV record.

peterdesmet commented 7 years ago

Nice!

timrobertson100 commented 7 years ago

@rdmpage - can you please confirm redirects using lsid.tdwg.org URLs work as you need?

rdmpage commented 7 years ago

@timrobertson100 Looks good to me...

oggioniale commented 3 years ago

In recent years I have often returned to using LSID resolver and lsid.info. I ask you why many of the examples in the previous comments are no longer working. But, above all, I would like to ask you why the implementation of an LSID resolver has not been continued.

MattBlissett commented 3 years ago

LSID is a distributed identifier system. The resolver at lsid.info has to query institutional servers to resolve an LSID, and most organizations who once ran a server to answer such queries have switched it off.

For a very basic resolution (just redirecting to a URL) it's relatively easy to set something up so these identifiers resolve. http://lsid.info/urn:lsid:biocol.org:col:15596 "works" (redirects); GBIF set that up when we took over running GRSciColl. (There is the DNS entry _lsid._tcp.biocol.org. 86400 IN SRV 1 0 80 biocol.org., two static authority XML files on a webserver, and an API that redirects given a GRSciColl identifier.)

GBIF has the domain biocol.org, but if the domain has been lost (or the organization who has it can't/won't change the DNS) a workaround could be added into the resolver. (The original LSID specification has a system for this, although even the old Perl client doesn't implement it.)

However, no-one at GBIF has time to work on this. If someone does want to do the work (e.g. making pull requests onto the resolver) then I will deploy it.