[Freebase-discuss] freebase machine ids

[Warren Harris]

On Apr 7, 2010, at 1:41 AM, Philip Kendall wrote:

>
> So does this mean that we'll still be giving out /user IDs as the
> primary ID for topics? (MQL-448, and the associated ugly hacks in the
> MQL code to prevent things like Ellerdale IDs being given out) Unless
> mIDs are going to take precedence over such "unstable" IDs, then the
> primary ID of a topic is going to remain pretty useless for anybody
> attempting to link to Freebase data.

Yes, we'll still give out /user ids. This change is unrelated to  
MQL-448.

Primary ids (those returned by "id":null) are inherently unstable  
(unless they're in the /en namespace), because an /en id can always be  
assigned later to the topic.

Primary mids can also change if a topic is a merge loser, but this is  
why we provide "mid":[]  -- to allow clients to more easily notice all  
the mids that now refer to the same thing. This allows them to update  
any that they may have stored. The first one in the list is always the  
merge winner's original mid.

Warren