[Termtools] DOIs for termination problems?

[Johannes Waldmann]

Dear all,

(this is more of a long-term proposal,
but motivated by my work on the current competition)

* situation:

we have several (partially incompatible, partially overlapping)
systems of naming benchmarks (termination problems).
("original filename" (tpdb-4.0), "xml filename" (newer TPDBs),
and perhaps more - like C problems coming from other competitions)
Also, on starexec, a benchmark is identified by some number,
which is created anew at each TPDB upload, so there is
not even a relation between TPDB-10.2 and TPDB-10.3.

* problem caused by this:

it is impossible to compare performance of solvers
on these problems, for jobs from  different competitions
(I'm not only thinking star-exec here, but also historical
data from earlier termination competitions at UIBK and LRI)

* possible solution: define a unique and eternal identifier
for each termination problem.

I can implement this internally in some way (cf.
https://github.com/stefanvonderkrone/star-exec-presenter/issues/84 )

but we could additionally make this visible externally,
and use the DOI (digital object identifier) concept  http://www.doi.org/

Do any of you have experience with this? Do you know of
other communities that are perhaps using this, or plan to?
Are there experiences with technical, legal, financial requirements?

Comments welcome.

- Johannes.