Integration with Enterprise Directory Services

[Martin Atkins]

Drummond Reed wrote:
> Yes, Marty Schleiff at Boeing is working on an RFC for how to represent XRIs
> in an LDAP directory for that very reason -- to establish standard OIDs for
> this attribute. LDAP already has a URI attribute type, but downcasting an
> XRI into a URI just to squeeze it into that attribute type loses the
> semantics that the XRI is an abstract identifier for the resource. So Boeing
> wants to establish OIDs for primary-xri (value of the canonical XRI) and
> alt-xri (value of any other XRI synonym).
> 

This is perhaps a bit of a tangent, but what are the disadvantages to 
representing XRI as a URI? It seems to me that having two completely 
orthogonal sorts of identifier rather than having one be a "subset" of 
the other just makes things needlessly complex. What makes you consider 
XRI to be an "abstract identifier" but a URI not to be?

The whole thing of just starting with an equals sign is very cute, but 
surely that's just a shorthand to avoid writing "xri://" in contexts 
where it's unambiguous, much like people routinely write things like 
"www.google.com" when an "http:" URI is expected.