(By Koray Atalag)

What is the proposal?

To determine a consistent and predictable URL scheme for openEHR specifications and other related artefacts (e.g. ITS, conformance, XML Schemas etc.)

We would then like to apply for openehr-specs namespace from http://identifiers.org for persistent identification of these openEHR artefacts.

Why bother?

Firstly for internal consistency. Also identifiers.org is an important registry for enabling persistent identifiers for the Semantic Web in computational modeling and bioinformatics communities. We can use these identifiers for semantic annotation of archetypes and associated data resources (e.g. for example linking archetypes or instance data to the version of specs they conform to in a triple-store). They also facilitate discovery etc. on the Net.

We are also looking at getting openehr-models namespace for models (e.g. openEHR models) which will then allow us to give unique identifiers to each clinical model anywhere on the Net. That's a separate proposal.

Details

We need consistent and predictable URL for specs - so that automated mappings can be provided from identifier.org (instead of manual mapping of an URI to a spec at an arbitrary URL at openehr.org)

Suggested openehr.org specs URL designation:

For example: http://www.openehr.org/releases/1.0.3/rm/ehr.html    (currently it is @ http://www.openehr.org/releases/RM/Release-1.0.3/ehr.html)

We also currently have other inconsistent URL schemes such as:

http://www.openehr.org/releases/1.0.1/architecture/rm/ehr_im.pdf
http://openehr.org/releases/1.0.2/architecture/rm/ehr_im.pdf

http://www.openehr.org/programs/specification/releases/1.0.2

NOTE: I have also included [its]=Implementation Technology Specification and [conf]=Conformance as a COMPONENT of spec although it is a separate heading on our current specs page for convenience. I think the namespace "openehr-specs" is broader than what we assume on this page.

If we go with the suggested URL designation, people at identifiers.org can write automatic mappings that redirect to openehr.org. They need mappings because they can't use identifiers that have "/" in them so it needs to be substituted with "." or "-" etc.

So taking the given example the corresponding identifiers.org URI will be:

NOTE: On openehr.org side this can be an alias (probably automatic) and the actual location on web server can still be  http://www.openehr.org/releases/RM/Release-1.0.3/ehr.html so the impact would be minimal but for simlicity's sake we may as well go with this URL scheme in future releases.

Another suggestion to consider is whether we want to provide alternate formats for our specs (e.g. html, pdf, open doc etc.). In that case we may want to redirect each spec to an autogenerated placeholder page that would provide links to html, pdf etc. specs. This is commonly used for other specs on identifiers.org; see: http://co.mbine.org/standards/specification-infrastructure

Example: