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Identifier Minting and Administration

How does identifier minting and administration work in NMDC?

Minting

A minting request has these attributes:

  • service: a reference to a minter service, e.g. the central minter service
  • requester: a reference to a requesting agent, e.g. a person
  • schema_class: a reference to a NMDC Schema class, e.g. nmdc:Biosample.
  • how_many: how many new schema_class identifiers the requester wants service to mint

Assuming the requester is authenticated and is authorized by the service to mint identifiers, one or more draft identifiers are minted. Each minted identifier has these attributes:

  • name: a literal string value that adheres to the scheme of nmdc:id, e.g. "nmdc: bsm-11-abc123".
  • typecode: a reference to the ID's typecode component, e.g. with name "bsm" and schema_class nmdc:Biosample.
  • shoulder: a reference to the ID's shoulder component, e.g. with name "11" and assigned_to the service that minted the ID.
  • status: a reference to the ID's status, e.g. "draft".
flowchart LR
    %% o1[/"(input/output) object"/]
    %% s1["(process) step"]
    %% t1(["terminator (process start/end)"])
    %% d1{decision}
    %% b1[("(data)base")]
    %% m1[\manual step/]

    %% p1[[predefined step]]
    classDef literal stroke-dasharray:1 4;
    classDef user stroke-dasharray:8 8;

    %% request-handler user-story model-diagram

    o_typecodename[/""bsm""/]:::literal
    o_idname[/""nmdc:bsm-11-abc123""/]:::literal
    o_shouldername[/""11""/]:::literal
    o_howmany[/"1"/]:::literal
    o_request[/"minting request"/]:::user
    o_shoulder[/"11"/]
    o_typecode[/"bsm"/]
    o_schemaclass[/"nmdc:Biosample"/]
    o_service[/"Central Minting Service"/]
    o_requester[/Alicia/]
    o_id_draft1[/draft 1 of ID/]
    o_draft[/draft/]

    s_minting[minting]

    o_typecode-. name .->o_typecodename
    o_typecode-. schema_class .->o_schemaclass

    click o_schemaclass href "https://microbiomedata.github.io/nmdc-schema/Biosample"

    o_request-. service .->o_service
    o_request-. requester .->o_requester
    o_request-. schema_class .->o_schemaclass
    o_request-. how_many .->o_howmany

    o_request-->|starts|s_minting[minting]

    o_shoulder-. assigned_to .-> o_service
    o_shoulder-. name .->o_shouldername

    s_minting-- draft_identifier -->o_id_draft1
    o_id_draft1-. name .->o_idname
    o_id_draft1-. shoulder .->o_shoulder
    o_id_draft1-. typecode .-> o_typecode
    o_id_draft1-. status .-> o_draft

All typecodes and shoulders are sourced from the database.

All minted identifiers are persisted to the database.