Identifiers in Deriva-ML

Having global unique identifiers is a critical aspect of data that is FAIR. Within DerivaML every object is given a unique name wich we call a Resource Identifier or RID.
The RID itself takes the from of a string with a dash seperated set of four character blocks.
Unqualified, the RID refers to the current values in the catalog, for example 1-000C

A RID may also specify a catalog snapshot ID, in which case it refers to a value at a specific point in time. Here is an example of a fully qualified RID: 1-000C@32S-W6DS-GAMG which specifies an the same object as above but with a prior value.

Within a catalog, we can just use the RID, with or without the snapshot ID.
However, if we want to refer to a RID outside the catalog, we can use a URI form:

https://www.eye-ai.org/id/1-000C@32S-W6DS-GAMG

We obtained this RID using the Cite button on the user interface.

Within the DerivaML class, a URI version of a RID can be obtained using the DerivaML.cite method.