[Sigia-l] URL design - mixing apples and oranges and tomatoes

[Ziya Oz]

"PeterV" wrote:
> - scalable: url's should live forever
> - no unnecessary information (from the users point of view) should be in
> the URL (so no silly long database id's, that's just dumb)

Are you referring to simple, static sites?

Otherwise, dynamically-generated sites need to store session data and/or
other variables to be used to re-create a bookmarked page. Since you can't
always rely on client-side persistence (cookies) and it's way too unwieldy
to resort to forms for every link or individual URL re-mapping, you have to
use unique IDs -- which means 'long, silly, dumb' alphanumerics in the URL.

Or have you discovered another method for HTTP persistence?

Incidentally, (other than terminably dumb email clients that chop up long
URLs) when does a long URL become too difficult to disseminate in this
digital age?

> - hackable (ie. you can go up a level and it makes sense)

I rarely see 'ordinary' users doing this.

What if *all* URLs at a site was of the form:

domain.com/42346DDR6577823TL

with an ID large enough for the app server to handle any number of unique
pages/URLs, could you live with that? That's about as short a unique,
bookmarkable, scalable URL as you'll get.

Best,

Ziya