[Buildingdata] Re: Ex-buildings

[Christopher Gutteridge]

My alternate suggestion was to have buildings URIs be a combination of 
their building number and year of completion, but
(A) nobody will give me that information and (B) nobody cares.

My plan is to just accept that it's an imperfect world rather than make 
the entire system much harder to use for day to day use.

I know that sucks but I've not got a better idea that's workable.

Of course; if the system becomes integral it may be that the senior 
university staff just alter the buildings & estates building numbering 
policy to stop reuse. Building 86 just got taken down and it's the first 
to go from my data. They don't plan to reuse the numbers for 10+ years. 
That gives us 10 years to convince them it's a bad idea *grin*.

The only exception was building 53 where the new building 53 was a 
direct replacement for the previous b53.



On 12/12/2011 15:52, Nick Gibbins wrote:
> Cool URIs don't change. When URIs change, links in documents break
> without warning.
>
> Building numbers change; buildings are renumbered, building numbers are
> reused.
>
> "Modelling the present" puts the onus of dealing with changing URIs wholly
> onto the users of data, and doesn't give them any tools with which to
> manage the change.
>
> Nick
>
> On 12 Dec 2011, at 15:40, Christopher Gutteridge wrote:
>
>> Names change all the time. Building codes less often but when they
>> change, I currently plan to only worry about modelling the present.
>>
>> Historical data is not unimportant, but it's not worth overcomplicating
>> the main use-cases.
>>
>> On 12/12/2011 15:23, Ian Stuart wrote:
>>> On 12/12/11 14:57, Nick Gibbins wrote:
>>>> What happens when the University builds a new building with the
>>>> number 86?
>>> What happens when Building 42 is renamed Building 42a?
>>> Is there a concept of timeliness (when they start&   when the end) to names?
>>>
>>>> Nick
>>>>
>>>> On 12 Dec 2011, at 14:53, Christopher Gutteridge wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I've just seen a portacabin building dismantled;
>>>>> http://data.southampton.ac.uk/building/86.html is gone!!
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm wondering if it makes sense to have a class for ex-buildings, so
>>>>> that if something refers to it, it's explicitly a demolished building
>>>>> (well, carried away on trucks in our case) rather than just a 404.
>>>
>> -- 
>> Christopher Gutteridge -- http://id.ecs.soton.ac.uk/person/1248
>>
>> You should read the ECS Web Team blog: http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/webteam/
>>
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-- 
Christopher Gutteridge -- http://id.ecs.soton.ac.uk/person/1248

You should read the ECS Web Team blog: http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/webteam/