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Identity Record

RSM Identity Record

The durable registry record of one RID’s registration, lifecycle, naming, provenance, and authoritative bindings.

RSM ID Learning Center2 min read

The RSM Identity Record is the registry's authoritative record for one RID, and the RID is its key. It binds the RID to one registered referent descriptor and preserves what is needed to keep that identity trustworthy: the issuing namespace, the identity lifecycle, issuance provenance, and enough information to prevent reassignment. Where applicable it also associates registered names and their history, authoritative space bindings, delegated authority history, and audit events.

What the record leaves out matters as much as what it holds. It need not contain the resource body, every relationship, or the current content revision. Those belong to the authoritative Semantic Space. The record is the registry-level envelope; the representation is what the space serves.

Example

For the Wellzai paper 451.7K4M9Q2X8D5P0R6T, the record would hold the referent descriptor Wellzai Outcome Formation Model, kind document, the primary RRN, issuer prefix 451, identity status active, the Wellzai space's RSN and RID, the issuance event, and its name history. It would not hold the paper's text.

A common misconception

“The Identity Record is the resource.” It describes the identity of a resource, not the resource itself, and not its full meaning. A separate misconception is that it is a single database row. Document 09 treats its identities table as only a projection; the logical record spans names, bindings, events, external identifiers, prefixes, authorities, and delegations.

That design choice belongs to the reference implementation, not to the standard. What the standard fixes is the content and the discipline: one record per RID, keyed by the RID, preserving history rather than overwriting it.

The record is keyed by the RID, kept by the Identity Registry, and full of provenance. The Identity Record Viewgraph draws its anatomy.

In the specification

Minimum contents: Document 08 §5.3. The canonical record: §5.3.1. Persistence mapping in the reference implementation: Document 09 §4.1.1.