Retrieving Collections and Resources by multiple identifiers

[adamretter]

In eXist-db Collections and Documents may be retrieved by their database path. However these Collections and Documents also have a numerical identifier.

In FusionDB in addition to Collections and Documents having a path and a numerical identifier, they also have a UUID. In FusionDB a Collection or Document can be retrieved directly just by its UUID.

It would be nice if we could retrieve Collections and Documents directly by an identifier. By directly, I mean without having to necessarily access a Document or Sub-Collection through a parent Collection.

One option perhaps could be as simple as swapping out String id in the XML:DB API for an interface like Identifier id. This would allow implementations to define their own identifiers, and allow retrieval by multiple different types of identifiers?

[reinhapa]

Sounds reasonable. How would we handle the backwards compatibility in that case? Creating a default String based implementation?

[adamretter]

@reinhapa I guess if we want API backwards compatibility then we have to add new methods alongside the existing String id methods

[reinhapa]

One option perhaps could be as simple as swapping out String id in the XML:DB API for an interface like Identifier id. This would allow implementations to define their own identifiers, and allow retrieval by multiple different types of identifiers?

@adamretter I could imagine to add a new method to either the Database in order to createIdentifier() implementation of a global document id...