Management of DDI 3.0 Unique Identifiers

This best practice specifies the technical requirements and procedures for ensuring well-managed identifiers for both internal use and external references. Management of identifiers is divided into two situations: during creation of new DDI 3.0 objects and during migration of older DDI versions into DDI 3.0 versions. These best practices will be described from both procedural and technical perspectives.  

While DDI 3.0 provides enhanced functionality in managing identifiers, one must proceed carefully to ensure that identifiers are constructed properly and managed consistently. This best practice lays out some steps to follow when building new identifiers and migrating DDI documents across versions. 

All DDI 3.0 objects need to be uniquely identified to enable them to be referred to by other DDI 3.0 instances. Since in DDI 3.0 the scope of all objects has increased from just a DDI instance to the whole world, additional measures are needed to guarantee uniqueness within this broader scope.