dotids

Dotids are a class of identifiers composed of dot-separated segments used to name resources within software systems. The terminology is not standardized and may refer to different patterns in different contexts, but the common concept is a hierarchical namespace represented as a dotted string. For example: com.example.app.user.profile or org.openid.identity.

Structure and syntax: each segment uses alphanumeric characters and underscores, starting with a letter or underscore; segments are joined with dots. A typical pattern is [A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]*(\.[A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]*)*. Dotids usually do not begin or end with a dot and may be case-sensitive. Validation often employs a regular expression to enforce the segment rules and the dot separators.

Usage: in configuration systems to name keys, in APIs to identify resources, as translation keys in internationalization, and in logging or telemetry to annotate events. Example keys include config.database.timeout, api.user.get, i18n.ui.button.submit. They are valued for readability and the ability to reflect a hierarchical organization of components or concepts.

Comparison to other identifiers: unlike universally unique identifiers (UUIDs), dotids are designed for human readability and namespace conveyance rather than global randomness. They support hierarchical scoping but may require governance to avoid naming collisions and inconsistencies across systems. Portability can also be impacted if different environments adopt incompatible naming rules or registries.

See also: hierarchical naming, dot notation, URIs, DNS.