Overview

Short names and URN syntax

Short names are the semantical foundation of every item. They are required to be as unique as possible, so it has proven to be good practise to attach the serial or asset number to the item, e.g. losgatos_awi_1303.

Even if there are numerous examples, short names shall be lower case only. Technically it is possible to set them upper case, but there are other places in the process chain that are case-sensitive. Be also aware that you cannot create items with the same short name under one parent item.

The respective setup of an item can be derived from the full URN (Uniform Resource Locator). It is the concatenation of all participating items, e.g.:

• station:radar_tower_helgoland:losgatos_awi_1303: the item losgatos_awi_1303 is mounted to the station:radar_tower_helgoland
• vessel:mya_ii:fb_741202:fsi_9999a: the FSI_9999a (type: thermosalinograph) is attached to FB_741202, and in return that is mounted to Mya_II

The topmost item in the URN hierarchy is also stated with its item type, such as vessel.

Occasionally items are not assigned to a specific parental item, e.g when drifters are deployed somewhere. Then the URN reads without parental item, e.g. drifter:drifter_gmr_bgcd01 (6070) and it is a free-floating item with a URN syntax derived from the item type.

Recently the development of registry.awi.de brought UUIDs for everything. The item station:radar_tower_helgoland:losgatos_awi_1303 has the UUID af127496-b8a6-4c4d-9b95-8c42f6a22afe. As of today (2021-06-17 15:18:15) UUIDs are only available via API.

Status of an item

Newly created items are assigned the state construction and can be seen and accessed by the owner (you) exclusively. Only items set to public are readable in public. If the item is not operative at the moment send it to devicestore and it is still accessible to others. If there are larger changes to the item and it (might) take a while until it is used again, please set it to construction again.

In the UI only three states are available to the editors. If you want to retire (decom) an item, the API must be utilized.

History and Citing

In .awi.de the history per item is tracked. Two entities must be considered: history of item configurations and history of item operations.

In the UI always the most recent configuration of the item is displayed. Former item configurations are accessible via the dropdown menu (below the blue bar on the top). Each item version comes with a PID, such as https://hdl.handle.net/10013/sensor.8e03063e-6179-48b4-b626-a25573727623, thus you can specificly address and reference a certain setup of your device, e.g. in reports or articles. This was used for example by Wulff, Lehmenhecker, and Hagemann (2016) when they referenced https://doi.pangaea.de/10013/sensor.664525cf-45b9-4969-bb88-91a1c5e97a5b to describe configuration of an AUV.

Following the link leads to a former setup of the item. (link: https://hdl.handle.net/10013/sensor.9fd3386a-6c1a-4775-bcbb-cc5d50e27494)

Remark: Some actions necessarily create a new version (https://spaces.awi.de/x/0oa0FQ). Versioning is permanently applied to all items and subitems, even if an action is applied to an item but not to its subitems each subitem gets a new handle as well, however, the action itself is not written to the subitems. This behavior is intended to have a proper documentation of the items, even if parts are not involved in certain phases of a measurement procedure. 

For item operations the Actions (see https://spaces.awi.de/x/0oa0FQ) are the place to store and handle such things.