PURLs

[Jon Knight]

On Sat, 6 Jan 1996, The Big Glee Bopper wrote:
> Only change is nickel -> silver, but if everyone who is interested in 
> ThomsImportantDoc is using http://www.indiana.edu/lurl/ThomsImportantDoc
> then there are no changes outside.

I hate to be a spoil-sport, but lots of sites have been doing this sort 
of thing for ages using DNS CNAMEs.  For example, www.lut.ac.uk (aka 
info.lut.ac.uk) has actually passed through several machines over time.  
The URLs remain the same though (assuming they're still there at all, 
which I don't thing PURLs address - if a resource is removed the PURL 
doesn't point to anything just like the "real" URL).  We've done the same 
thing for our project machines so that current www.roads.lut.ac.uk points 
to my workstation, weeble.lut.ac.uk, but in the future it might point to 
a completely different machine elsewhere in the network.

Personally, I don't thing persistance is going to be achieved easily 
without electronic holding libraries.  Even URCs/URNs don't _guarantee_ 
persistance.

Jon

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND.  LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl.  More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *