Oracc OIDS

NOTE: Oracc IDs are presently in development and are not (quite) suitable for external use as persistent IDs. This page will be updated when that stage is reached, probably in summer 2019.

Overview

Oracc provides unique, persistent IDs for sign list and glossary data and we call these Oracc IDs, or OIDs. They are assigned internally by Oracc on only one of its machines, and are propagated from that machine to the other Oracc servers. Only a few projects are allowed to request assignment of new OIDs, or other changes to OIDs such as retiring or redirecting them. The general goal is to allow external projects to refer to Oracc words, senses, and signs in a way that is guaranteed to be both unique and permanent.

Quick Start Examples

Here are some fragments of the OIDs table--but note that the actual OIDs in this fragment are not yet guaranteed against changing:

o0000004	sl	1(DIŠ)	sign
o0000005	sl	1(EŠE₃)	sign
o0000006	sl	1(GEŠU)	sign
o0002851	sux	a[arm]N	word
o0002852	sux	a[arm//arm]N'N	sense	o0002851
o0002853	sux	a[arm//plow handle]N'N	sense	o0002851

The ID is in the first column, then comes the DOMAIN--sl for signlist or sux for Sumerian--then the KEY, then a TYPE, sign, word, or sense, then an EXTENSION which is only given when type=sense.

Technical Details

OIDs work with the following elements: ID, DOMAIN, AUTHORITY, KEY, TYPE, EXTENSION.

ID: ID consists of a leading lowercase 'o' followed by 7 decimal digits.
DOMAIN: DOMAIN is the top-level area division of the data assigned OIDs. At present there is a domain 'sl', for 'signlist', which covers Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform, and a domain 'sux', for 'Sumerian'. When additional languages are added into the OID system, their three-letter ISO codes will be used for their domain, e.g., akk, for Akkadian.
AUTHORITY: An AUTHORITY is an Oracc project which is allowed to make additions and corrections to an OID domain. The authority for the signlist domain, 'sl', is the Oracc Global Signlist Project, or OGSL. The authority for the Sumerian domain, 'sux', is the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary, or ePSD2.
KEY: A KEY is a string representation of the object assigned the ID. The form of the keys in an OID domain is dependent on the type of the object.
TYPE: TYPE gives the type of an object within a domain. For the 'sl' domain, TYPE is presently 'sign' and the KEY is the sign name as given in OGSL. For language domains such as 'sux', TYPE is 'word' or 'sense', and the KEY is a standard Oracc word or sense signature, i.e., for word it is CF[GW]POS; for sense it is CF[GW//SENSE]POS'EPOS.
EXTENSION: EXTENSION is only used at present for objects with type=sense. The content is the OID of the word to which the sense belongs.