Using Short, Persistent Identifiers In Geonetwork

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Using Short, Persistent Identifiers in GeoNetwork

Contributor(s): Tom Benner

Unfortunately, programmatically assigning short, integer IDs to records in GeoNetwork would require a great deal of reworking GeoNetwork's source code. GeoNetwork uses 16-byte hex numbers as keys for its records (see the uuid field), but these are too unwieldy for users to easily use as references to specific maps. The id field of each record is a small integer, but it isn't persistent through exporting/importing. If the data ever needed to be transferred from one instance of GeoNetwork to another, these ids would be rewritten, making this field unusable as a reliable, long-term identifier. The THL's current method of assigning IDs to maps is to assign them integer IDs manually. The ID of a map is added as a keyword of the record, with the form "THL47".

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