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RID

RSM Identifier

The permanent canonical identifier of one resource referent.

RSM ID Learning Center2 min read

An RID answers one question: which resource? It is written as a registered prefix and an issuer-generated suffix, <prefix>.<suffix>, and it identifies one referent — a document, a farm, a watershed, a concept — for as long as the registry exists. Its comparison rule is the strictest one available: two RIDs are the same only if their canonical characters are identical.

The prefix names a registered issuance namespace of one to sixteen decimal digits. The suffix is twelve to thirty-two uppercase Crockford Base32 characters; the default issuance profile uses sixteen characters carrying eighty random bits. Neither half identifies anything alone — only the complete RID does.

Example

451.7K4M9Q2X8D5P0R6T is the illustrative RID that Document 08 gives to the Wellzai paper Outcome Formation Model. The paper may be revised, moved to another application, or handed to another steward; its RID stays the same while its landing page, authority bindings, and representations change as governed metadata.

A common misconception

“The RID tells you what the thing is.” It does not, by design. An RID carries no resource type, Semantic Space, place, jurisdiction, owner, or hosting location; those are metadata, obtained by resolution. Meaning that is not in the identifier can change without the identifier changing — which is the whole point.

The RRN is a registered name that maps to exactly one RID. The prefix is the namespace half of the RID. The Identity Record is the registry's durable record keyed by the RID. For the reasoning behind the opaque design, read Why an RID should not encode its meaning.

In the specification

RID syntax and issuance: Document 08 §3.1 (canonical syntax), §3.3 (suffix generation), and §3.5 (immutability and non-reuse). Try the resolver demonstration with the example above.